Lost and Found
by Selective scifi junkie
Summary: At the British Eurotunnel Terminal on the first day of half term, a car is found to be a drugged, bound, bloodied man. Section D are called in, but time is not on their side. Might they have seen this man before? Set early in series 6, so team consists of Adam, Ros, Jo, Connie and Malcolm. The T is for strong violence, more is discussed and implied than seen. Details inside.
1. Eurotunnel Terminal 6:50 AM

**Lost and Found**

 **Summary:** At the British Eurotunnel Terminal on the first day of half term, a car is found to be carrying something horrible. Section D are called in urgently, but time is not on their side.

 **Spoilers:** Potentially anything up to 6.4 (The extremist)

 **Set:** Immediately after 6.3, spanning to a fortnight after 6.4, but ending before 6.5

 **Rating:** M, Spooks must always be an M in my opinion. There is no sexual content that would carry a rating over a K+ and very little violence is seen to be inflicted, but far, far worse is discussed and its results are seen in some detail.

 **Genres:** Suspense, drama, HC

 **Disclaimer:** I own nothing of Spooks, only the plot and the few original characters are mine.

* * *

 **27/10/07  
** **6:50 AM  
** **Eurotunnel Terminal**

Constable Callum Williams of the British Transport Police set down his half-finished tea, picked up the leash of his sniffer dog, Davey, and stomped back out to his post. It was going to be a long day, half term had just started. People were rushing for the Channel Tunnel, like they always did.

He made it to his checkpoint and looked up. A navy blue ford car was first in line. A bespectacled white man sat in the driver's seat, the front passenger seat was empty.

"Good morning Sir," He said, smiling, as the driver wound down the window. "Passports please." There was a child, probably less than two, slumped asleep in a car seat, Callum Williams could just see her round the sunscreen stuck to the inside of the window.

"Sure." The man had an American accent. He handed Callum Williams two UK passports, one for himself, one for the girl. Jason and Annette Brewer, apparently. The photos were a good enough likeness, the dates were fine. Callum Williams handed the passports back.

"Thank you Sir and did you pack the car yourself?"

"Yeah, last night."

"Any chance anyone could have tampered with it since?" Davey was looking intently to his left. Likely as not he thought he'd seen a rabbit. He wasn't the most reliable dog Callum Williams had ever had.

"Not really, it spent the night in a locked garage."

"Any bottled gas or other flammable materials on board?"

"No."

"And any animals."

"No."

"Sounds good to me, I'm just going to let my dog check you over. Davey, go seek." Callum Williams slackened the dog's leash. Davey started the pattern he'd been taught, got to the level of the rear door handles, then gave up and bolted for the boot. He ran his nose up and down the rim of the boot, sniffing fervently, and refused to move on. That wasn't a positive scent, if he got a positive scent, he froze. But it was something he wanted.

"That's odd." Callum Williams remarked aloud.

"I got a lady dog at home, she was in there yesterday." The man called from the front of the car. "That'll be what he wants."

"Would you mind coming and opening the boot for me, Sir." Callum Williams said, walking back to the front of the car, dragging his dog.

"I don't think you want me to do that."

"Why's that Sir?" Callum surreptitiously tapped his radio. If there might be trouble, he might as well get someone out of the tea room to help him.

"Cause, ah… You're gonna think I'm such a weirdo, but there's a dead deer in there. We're going to see my sister and her husband does taxidermy, you know, stuffs things. I saw this deer knocked down on the road yesterday, was pretty fresh, so I thought, I'm going to see the guy anyway, he'd love a dead deer to play with. So I wrapped it up good and tight and stuck it in the trunk, but it's over a day dead now, it won't be a good smell if we open that up."

"So any animals?"

"I always figured that meant live animals, like dogs or whatever."

"Is there a problem?" Constable Lucy Small asked, walking over.

"No, this gentleman was just about to open his boot so we could have a look."

"No, I was saying that nobody wants that outcome, the smell will be pretty bad."

"I'm sure we're big enough to cope with it." Callum Williams wondered why the man was making a fuss. He wouldn't move on until Callum Williams was happy with him, so why was he drawing this out.

"Look, just let me through, I'll make it worth your while. I wanna catch my crossing."

"And you will if you just open the boot."

"Twenty bucks, each."

"Sir, are you aware that attempting to bribe a police officer is a crime?"

"It's not a bribe, it's just dinner for you and your wife and me getting on my train."

"Well, how about you exit your vehicle, open the boot, we have a quick look, then you can get on your train and keep your forty pounds?"

"Fine." The man said loudly. He opened his door, nearly in to Lucy Small, and slammed it shut again. To Callum Williams's surprise, the little girl in the back didn't wake crying. This just didn't smell right.

"Heavy sleeper, your little one." He remarked.

"What? Yes. Yes she is." He pulled at the boot with one hand. It didn't open.

"It's jammed." He pulled it again.

"Oh dear." Callum Williams said calmly. "We'll get some help for you with that." He flipped a switch on his radio. "Backup to checkpoint four please, backup to checkpoint four."

"Look, there is nothing in there! Let me get on the train, else I'll report you for harassment."

"You are of course welcome to lodge a complaint, Sir, but please open the boot."

"I told you, it's jammed."

Two more officers, Peter and Chris, came walking up.

"Morning gents, we're just trying to open this gentleman's boot, we're having a little trouble."

The man was getting angrier by the second. "They are the trouble. I told them already what's in there and they will not let me go!"

"Let's get this sorted quickly then Sir." Peter said. "May I try the boot?" He held out a hand for keys. The man stood for a moment, hesitating.

He grabbed Peter by the outstretched arm and flung him sideways in to Chris. The force of the two men overbalancing together knocked Callum in to the car.

"Checkpoint four to all units." That was Lucy. "We have a suspect fleeing north on foot towards the Travelex. Repeat: suspect fleeing north on foot towards the Travelex. Not known to be armed, but has behaved violently." Callum pulled Peter to his feet. Chris rolled on to his side and coughed. "You OK?" Lucy asked. All three of them nodded.

"What on earth was that about?" Peter asked. "And he's left his kid."

"I don't think he has." Lucy said.

"What?" Chris asked.

"That would have woken anyone up." Lucy was staring at the little girl. She was still motionless. This kept on getting stranger. Callum tried the door handle – the car wasn't locked – and reached for the little girl's hand. He felt the cold, hard surface of fibreglass.

"She's a dummy." He said.

"Why would..?" Chris started.

"Well how often do you do a full search on a car with a toddler in it?" Lucy asked.

"So what does he not want us to find?"

.

The man sprinted north, back along the lines of lines of waiting cars, jumping bonnets where there was no room to run between them. They filled every lane in every direction almost back to the car park. One policeman so far had tried to stop him. The man had just pushed him out of the way and kept running. He was gasping by the time he reached the Travelex, he looked around, then made for a man just getting out of his car.

"Stop in the name of the law!" A man's voice shouted. The running man ignored it.

"Give me your car!" He bellowed, grabbing the driver and pulling him out of the way. He got one leg in to the footwell, but the driver held on to the second. The man doubled back and drew back a fist to punch the driver off, but sharp-nailed hands found his face. There was a woman in the passenger seat, and in the dawn he hadn't seen her. She grabbed for his face, screaming for help, screaming curses at their assailant. The fleeing man broke free from her and bolted out of her grip, headlong in to another police officer.

But this one was ready for the impact, set his weight to meet it. The fleeing man fell to the ground, dazed. The officer rolled him over and cuffed him before he'd had time to consider how to get up.

"I'm arresting you for assault and attempted theft of a vehicle. You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence."

.

The four officers set the dog to search the car again, but he simply wasn't interested in anything but the boot. Lucy Small crouched down and sniffed at the edge of the boot. She grimaced.

"That's rank. It smells like… like a loo at a festival or something." She reached for the handle of the boot.

"Don't." Peter said. She looked back at him. "If I was trying to get a bomb past a dog, I wouldn't try to get the smell off, I'd put something really strong smelling round it."

"Dogs'll smell past near enough anything."

"Do you want to risk it? I'd rather call the Bomb Squad."

Bomb Squad arrived, three more men who cordoned off a wide area, causing the holiday queues to get even worse, and set about the car methodically. They had their own dog who, like the first, sniffed curiously at the boot for a second, then moved off again. Callum Williams and Lucy Small came back inside the cordon, curiosity overwhelming fear, and watched as they drained the fuel off then opened the bonnet, every hand hidden under latex. They moved on to the front seats, shone lights under them, looked in the doors, opened the glove compartment.

"Look at this." One said, pulling out a safebox. Someone else pulled a key out of the driver's door. It fit. The box contained three glass drug bottles, no paper label, just the letters 'K', 'V' and 'T' inked on, and a needle and syringe.

"Let's add provisional drug charges to the list. 'K' is usually Ketamine."

"Not enough for him to be dealing it, looks like personal use."

The fibreglass child was removed and checked, the car seat followed. What looked like a basic electrics kit was under the car seat. The suitcase beside it held a man's clothes, a flick knife, more needles and a larger, unmarked, drug bottle.

"That might be dealer's quantity."

They came to the boot. All five officers stood in an arc around it. One of the bomb squad pressed the button and lifted the boot.

The nauseating smell that had drawn the dogs was suddenly much clearer. Stale urine, dung and something more acidic, almost like vomit. There was a large, black, zipped up fabric bag in the back. The Bomb Squad looked it, and the two cases beside it, over for wires and triggers. One man grabbed the cloth bag by the handles and pulled.

"Ooh 'eck. That's heavy." Another man helped him to haul it out of the boot and on to the floor. It had left a wet patch in the boot under itself.

"That's what smells then." One of the Bomb Squad leant forward and tentatively unzipped the bag.

Both men near enough to see what was inside jumped and swore.

.

A man lay inside. He was entirely naked, his light brown skin was mottled with bruises. There were newly scabbed cuts on his feet, face and hands. Small circular burns were scattered across his thighs and forearms. His wrists and ankles were taped together, then cable tied to each other. There was lumpy black-brown fluid around his mouth and nose.

"Go and call the beat cops." One of the Bomb Squad said. "This is a murder charge now."

"Is he..?" Lucy Small pressed forward. "I think he's…" She reached out, grimacing at the smell, and touched his neck. "He's warm. Call an ambulance." Callum Williams turned and started to run back for a phone. "And I think that's a pulse! He's alive!"

 **Please review, let me know that you are reading, and if you have any theories as to who this man is, please do tell me.**


	2. Canada Water 6:55 AM

**27/10/07/  
** **6:55 AM  
** **Canada Water**

"Dad." Adam stirred reluctantly. There was a tap at the door. "Dad." He was home, he was safe, that was Wes. "Dad, are you awake?"

"Just about, come in." Adam hauled himself half way in to a sitting position. The door opened, a moment later, Wes came through it, carrying two mugs. "Oh, you brought tea! You're a star." Adam sat up further as Wes handed him his mug and perched on the end of the bed. It was the first day of half term, Wes was going to spend most of the week with Fiona's parents, but Adam had managed to get a day on which Ros and Harry had promised he'd only be called as a last resort, though being down to a unit of three again it wasn't hard to imagine that happening. He could only hope.

"How did you sleep?"

Wes nodded once. "Okay, how did you sleep?" He dipped his head to take a mouthful of tea, but flinched back. "Hot tea."

"Ah, well enough." He'd been woken a few times by vague, unpleasant dreams, and he kept seeing Zaf telling him to leave him behind just as he was dropping off, but at least he wasn't screaming himself awake every night anymore. "So how many brochures have you still got on the table?"

"Just three. British, Science and Imperial War." That was their plan for today, worked out in the car on the way back from school last night. A museum, lunch and a park, then off to Nana and Grandad's. Adam was quietly grateful that Wes hadn't said the Tower of London, which struck him as a better bomb target than a museum because of its political significance.

"And which way are you leaning?"

"Well, Imperial War is nearest, but we went there with school this term."

"You could probably show me round then."

"And it's in a park so we don't need to get to the park afterwards because we're already there."

"True."

"But the Science Museum is so big that we didn't really do it properly last time."

"Also true. Do you still like the Launchpad?"

"Sort of. I think I'm getting a bit big for it now, I understand more of the rest of the museum now."

"If we went there, Hyde park would be closest. We're too early for Winter Wonderland though."

"And if we went to the British Museum it would be Regents Park?"

"I'd say so, unless we wanted to go for one of the little squares near there."

"But then we couldn't really bring the ball, could we?"

"Russell Square we probably could."


	3. Eurotunnel Terminal 7:20 AM

**27/10/07  
** **7:20 AM  
** **Eurotunnel Terminal**

They saw the ambulance coming along the Emergency Services access road. Lucy Small stood up as tall as she could and waved. The ambulance stopped and two paramedics got out, one bald, one brown haired.

"He's here!" Lucy Small shouted. "He's here!" Some people queuing in cars were peering through or out of windows to try and see what was going on, but the cordon kept them too far back to see much more than four cops and a big black bag. The paramedics broke in to a run.

"Is he conscious?"

"No."

Both paramedics crouched down, wrinkling their noses at the smell.

"Did you throw that coat over him?"

"Yes, he didn't have anything before."

"Hello Sir. Sir? Can you hear me?" The bald paramedic said. "Sir, can you open your eyes?" The man didn't respond at all. "I'd call that unconscious. Did you just find him like this in the boot?"

"Yes."

"Do you know anything about what happened to him?"

"No."

"Right, you do resp, I'll do pulse." The bald paramedic laid a hand to the man's neck, the other put a hand in front of his mouth and nose. The bald paramedic held out a wristwatch so they both could see it.

"I have 64."

"I have 4."

"Go and fetch a stretcher and a couple of blankets then." The brown haired paramedic got up and jogged back to the ambulance. The bald paramedic turned back the coat and looked over the man bit by bit, noting the cuts, the burns, the bruises, the broken fingers, the drawn nails. He took a pair of scissors from his pocket and cut the ties on the man's hands and feet and pulled the duct tape free. "Poor chap." He said quietly. "You've been through it haven't you?" He pulled the man's eyelid up slightly. The man didn't attempt to blink. He turned to the police officers. "Thank you for what you've done for him, thank you for trying to warm him up. I think it would have been easy to write him off as dead. If you find any ID in there that might be his, please pass it on to William Harvey Hospital in Ashford, that's where we're taking him. Call us there and cite when and where we picked him up." The brown-haired paramedic set the stretcher down beside the black bag.

 **My abiding question is: What happened here? Who is he?**


	4. Canada Water 7:40AM

**27/10/07**  
 **7:40 AM**  
 **Canada Water**

"So how's the team shaping up this year Wes?" Adam asked, dropping a piece of toast each on to his and Wes's plates.

"OK." Wes said, starting to butter his. "We lost Ed and Andy because they went to secondary school and they were really good. None of the year threes have a clue."

"Well they're year threes, they've never played before."

"Well now our best kicker is James and he's not very good."

"You're just going to have to teach some more people then. Have you thought about trying to learn?"

Wes took a mouthful of toast and swallowed it. "Kicking's boring."

"Boring!" Adam exclaimed. "Is Jonny Wilkinson boring? If he could only keep himself uninjured for fifteen minutes he'd be the best player England can field. Everyone needs fly-halves, it's a big part of why the All Blacks are so good, they always have a really great fly-half." Wes looked rather chastened.

"So you think I should learn to kick."

"That was a bit of a rant, wasn't it?" Adam smiled. "No, I'm saying that there's a reason they don't let you specialise yet. At the end of the day it depends on what your body's like as much as what you can do. If you get your mother's build, you'll end up a scrum-half, if you get mine you'll be front or second row by the time you're sixteen."

"You were a lock, weren't you?"

"Once I got to university, I was a hooker in school, mostly. We got moved around a lot." Both of them stopped talking and ate for a couple of minutes.

"Dad," Adam made an affirmative noise round his toast. "Can we go to the Science Museum?" Adam swallowed.

"'Course. If that's where you'd like to go."


	5. Ambulance parked at the terminal 7:25 AM

**A/N: You do not need the definitions included at the end of this chapter to understand what's going on. They are purely there for interest.**

 **27/10/07**  
 **7:25 AM**  
 **An ambulance, parked at the Eurotunnel Terminal**

"Patrick, you drive." The bald paramedic said, as they set the man down inside the ambulance. "I'm not sure this one's going to make it to A&E alive."

"Do you think he's hypovolaemic or dehydrated?"

"I think he's possibly both. Look at the way his skin tents. Once you see past his colour and his bruises he's very pale, and very cold. I think he's shocky too. Do you want to try for a vein?"

"I'll try once."

"Let's see if I can actually raise one for you, eh?" The bald paramedic grabbed the man's arm, twisted the bruised flesh gently and held it. Patrick pulled a catheter out of a bag and opened the packaging. He swabbed the man's arm with alcohol and drove the catheter in, slowly, shallow angle. "I think it's just there, just to your right." Blood filled the hub, slowly, but definitely venous blood.

"Thanks Rob." Patrick started taping the catheter in to place.

"No problem. It's not easy to get a vein first time in a patient this flat."

"500 mil saline?"

"Absolutely, and do we have eye lube?"

"Yeah, it's there." Patrick set a fluid line up and attached it to the patient's catheter. Rob applied a clear jelly to the patient's eyes.

"Very small pupils." He remarked.

"He looks almost… Tiny pupils plus vomit, plus not breathing that well and cold… he almost looks like a heroin overdose."

Rob sighed. "I know what you mean – help me get his legs propped up – but if it is that it isn't only that, he doesn't look like a druggie, he looks too well." Patrick snorted. "Not right now, obviously, but he's not thin, his veins aren't shot to bits, his hair's cut, he looks like he works out. What's inside his mouth like?"

Patrick looked. "Bloody, he's missing teeth."

"The thing is, for his injuries, I'd want him to have opioids anyway, so part of me wants to hold off the naloxone."

"What if he arrests?"

"I'll have it drawn up and keep a hand on his pulse."

"You know that's no-"

"Let's get him to hospital then. Throw me the fluid-pressure-sleeve-thing."

* * *

 **A &E: ** Accident and Emergency, the British term for ER

 **Raise:** To raise a vein is to block its outflow, so it fills and becomes prominent so it's easier to get a catheter into

 **Hypovolaemic:** Having insufficient blood in the body, usually but not always a consequence of bleeding.

 **Shocky:** Medical slang for hypovolaemic and not coping with it

 **Opioids:** The powerful class of painkillers that includes morphine and also heroin, which can cause a patient to stop breathing

 **Naloxone:** The most effective antidote for overdose of drugs like heroin, including most powerful painkillers.

 **Arrests:** Stops breathing or heart stops beating. If the latter happens, the man's chances of surviving this would be under 5%.


	6. London 9:50 AM

**27/10/07  
** **9:50 AM  
** **London**

Adam didn't tend to let Wes have a hand in designing their routes through London. He did that. He could have written fast routes, routes with the fewest changes, routes with the most CCTV blackspots, routes with chokepoints for showing up tails… His routes for traveling with Wes were written mostly by fearing the worst. If Adam had been planning a bombing in London today, with the aim of killing as many civilians as he could, where would he hit? The 7/7 bombings had made him cautious about taking Wes on the tubes, buses he felt were a bit safer; so many out there at any one time, not the same risks of a gas attack… What tubes they did take weren't the busiest lines and didn't go through choke points; Waterloo, Bank…

So they went slower, more scenic ways. Jubilee line to Southwark, then a walk, across Jubilee Bridge (which made Adam nervous, but if you were going to bomb a bridge, you'd do it at 8:30 on a Monday morning, not 9:50 on a Saturday) and up to Trafalgar Square – "because there's almost always something interesting going on up there" – then a bus, pointing out the Ritz, the French Embassy (possibly a target, probably not on a Saturday morning), Wellington Arch, so that it was better than the tube, even if it was slower. They sat on the bottom floor of the bus, Adam felt that, in something like a bus, if you were on top and a bomb went off below, you were dead. If you were below and a bomb went off above you, you might have a chance. It wasn't normal, he knew it wasn't normal, he knew that he and Wes were far more likely to get killed for not looking both ways crossing the road than for being in the wrong place when a bomb went off. But he couldn't make that part of himself stop, even for an hour or two.

* * *

 **Chapters vary in length, I know. They are set out as scenes.**


	7. William Harvey Hospital, Ashford 8:10 AM

**27/10/07  
** **8:10 AM  
** **William Harvey Hospital, Ashford**

"Right," A young A&E doctor in scrubs said to Rob as they took the gurney through the doors. "Let's have the handover."

"Okay, this is an unidentified male, early thirties, looks Middle Eastern to me. He was found unconscious, naked and tied up in a bag at a routine car search at this side of the Eurotunnel, trying to cross to France. He has not shown any sign of consciousness since we picked him up, or reported by the police who found him, his pupils are constricted. His heart rate has been sitting around the sixty mark, but his pressures are poor so I'd call that bradycardic, he's breathing badly so we've had him on oxygen, about four to six per minute. He's cold, was 35.2 when we picked him up, he's up to 35.4 now. He had vomit round his mouth when we found him and he's dehydrated. He's got an array of injuries… teeth missing, you can see the cuts on his face, he's bruised over a lot of his body, some black some fading." A look of alarm was spreading across the doctor's face. "He's missing fingernails and toenails, he's got broken digits, small circular burns on his face, forearms, chest, abdomen, thighs and feet, cuts in his groin that look cauterised, one of them looks infected."

"Okay," The doctor said, her jaw set. "What have you given him so far?"

"Two 500 mil fluid boluses, his vitals are improving, but he's not showing any sign of coming to. We thought about naloxone because of the breathing and the pupils, but given everything else…"

"Okay." The doctor leant over the man and pulled one of his eyes open. She shone a light in to the eye. "Well his pupils react, which is a good sign." She straightened up again. "Anything else?"

"Other than thinking that whoever did this needs to spend the next thirty years behind bars? No."

"Right then, thank you." Rob and Patrick walked away. The doctor and a nurse started to wheel the man down the corridor.

"He looks like he's under anaesthetic or over-sedated, doesn't he?" The nurse said.

"I know what you mean. Can you get a weight for him and set up three times maintenance fluids?" The doctor set a stethoscope to the man's chest. "Yeah, we can get away with that. Oh – Doctor Hatch, ambulance just brought this man in." Another man in scrubs, with white-blond hair stopped and turned to the first doctor. She repeated what the paramedics had told her.

"So what's your question?" Doctor Hatch asked.

"Do you think he looks drugged and do you think he looks like a torture case?"

Doctor Hatch looked pointedly at the man's hands. "Drawn nails and missing teeth, Doctor Mullin. Yes. Call the Truro Centre and see if they'll take him. As for whether he's drugged…" Doctor Hatch pulled the man's eye open again. "He does look a bit opioid-y, doesn't he? Let's give him a dose of naloxone and see if he perks up. What's your plan at the moment?"

"Oxygen, three times maintenance fluids and naloxone." Doctor Mullin said.

Doctor Hatch nodded. "Sounds good, don't leave him unattended and keep an eye on his pain. If he's doped with Torb the naloxone is going to make him hurt."

Doctor Mullin left the nurse to sort oxygen and fluids while she fetched the naloxone. She put it in the patient's fluid line and asked the nurse if she'd be OK with him while she went to call Truro for advice, since that was what you were meant to do if you suspected torture. She hadn't even made it to the door of observation when an alarm went off behind her, three beats in a run, a crash. She looked around quickly. That wasn't hers, was it? It shouldn't be hers!

"Here, here, here!" That was Doctor Cortellino, so tall his raised hand nearly brushed the ceiling as he called for help. "This one! This one!" He was down the far end of the ward, she hurried back towards him, past her own patient, over half the people in the room going with her. A Caucasian man in his forties lay in the bed next to Doctor Cortellino, a nurse was kneeling next to him, she'd already started CPR. Someone was dropping the bed, someone else had the Ambu bag, what could she do? Drugs. Doctor Mullin ran for the crash box.

* * *

 **Constricted pupils:** Small pupils, less worrying than pupils that are too big, but potentially a sign of heroin or morphine overdose

 **Bradycardic:** Having a heart rate that is too slow. If this man's blood pressure is poor, 64 is indeed too slow.

 **Torb:** Medical slang for butorphanol, a morphine-like drug which is not a terribly effective painkiller, but is a very effective sedative.

 **Ambu bag:** A bag used to force breath in to a person who is not breathing.


	8. Exhibition Road, London 12:20 PM

**27/10/07  
** **12:20 PM  
** **Exhibition Road, London**

"Nah, let's go somewhere else."

"Why Dad?"

"Because cafés in museums are always more expensive or less good than the cafés outside, or both."

"Okay then."

They went up two flights of stairs and out on to Exhibition Road, the sun was strong, Adam undid his coat. Wes copied him. They turned South towards the station, there had been a few fairly nice cafés just West of the station the last time he'd been round here and paying attention to the scenery. Adam was looking around – he was always looking around in a place like this, he couldn't help himself – when he saw him. A young man, probably not even twenty, mixed race, walking fast, head down, hands in the pockets of a coat, a very big coat for today's weather.

Bomber. That was the first thing that went through Adam's head. A young male, alone, looking stressed and disconnected from his surroundings, with space to conceal a bomb on his body. Adam stopped walking.

"Dad?" He was not on duty. He did not have an obligation to protect the public, not today, not from this. The only person he had an obligation to protect was Wes. And what could he do? He was one man, unarmed, with no intelligence. Just a feeling. Startling a suicide bomber was a very good way to get yourself killed, and for all he knew there was a unit already on this. The best he could do was to get himself and Wes out of the way.

"Actually, let's go this way." He turned round. "There used to be a really nice place down towards…" Where would the next cluster of cafés be in this direction? "What's it called? Gloucester road. That's it. Let's go down there." Away. Away from that man and whatever was under his coat.


	9. William Harvey Hospital, Ashford 8:40 AM

**27/10/07  
** **8:40 AM  
** **William Harvey Hospital, Ashford**

Doctor Cortellino didn't call the code until they'd done the full twenty minutes of trying; drugs, shocks, CPR never stopping for longer than it took to swap people out... He wasn't one to give up on even the two percent chance the patient had of leaving hospital alive, not until the stats said there was no chance at all. Once they had given up on the crash, Doctor Mullin walked back over to her patient. The nurse had put a hospital gown on him since she'd left.

"How is he?"

"Picking up." The nurse replied. "He's breathing a lot better, his pressures are up. He had a bit of a blink the last time I checked it."

"Let's see how he does without the mask." Doctor Mullin said, reaching for the man's face to take his oxygen mask off. He blinked as it passed his eyes. "Are you waking up?" She put a hand on his shoulder. "Hello?"

He recoiled. He recoiled so violently he fell off the other side of the bed and cried out as he hit the floor. Doctor Mullin ran round the bed, the nurse just behind her.

"Woah, sorry-"

"I don't know." His voice was slurred, hoarse, his eyes were wide with terror. He shrank back from them as he spoke, his hands were out of shape, and not moving normally. Comminuted fractures. That looked like comminuted fractures. "There's no more. I don't know any more."

"It's alright, there's-" She reached out a hand to him. He made to get up, to get away from her, but cried out and fell, and cried out again as he hit the floor.

"No more." He repeated. "Please, there's no more." She'd expected him to speak no English, or speak with an Afghani or Iraqi accent. But the man was English. There could be no doubt of that. Even as hoarse and slurred as he was, this man had learned his English in England.

"What's happening?" Doctor Hatch appeared behind Doctor Mullin.

"He just woke up and fell off the bed."

"Try to take his wrist."

Doctor Mullin reached for the arm the man was cowering behind. "It's okay." She said softly. "It's okay." She closed a hand around his forearm. He pulled away, screaming.

"He wasn't just doped with Torb, I think he's tripping on Ket. He's hallucinating." Doctor Hatch said. He straightened up. "Hey, can I get an orderly and 5 mig diazepam for IV please." He lowered his voice again. "Just back off him for a minute, see if he settles at all."

He didn't settle. Not in any meaningful sense. He stilled, he stopped screaming, but he gasped and cowered, after a minute he vomited. Haematemesis. Either he had a GI bleed or he'd swallowed a lot of blood.

"Right." Doctor Hatch said as the orderly arrived. "We're going to be gentle but firm with him, he's got multiple injuries, he's tripping, he's very, very scared. We're going to restrain to sedate to relieve the distress. We're going to drop him on to his front, then fit an extension line to his catheter and give the sedation. Are we clear?"

The man wasn't strong enough to put up much of a fight, but he screamed in either pain or terror from the moment they reached for him. Doctor Hatch and the Orderly pinned him, Doctor Mullin swapped the lines and gave the drug, slowly. His screams gave way to sobs after a minute or two, he stopped struggling. He fought the sedation, protested incoherently, shook his head and left flecks of bloody, foul-smelling spit on the floor.

"Think he's down?" Doctor Mullin asked after a minute. Doctor Hatch nodded and let go of the patient. He didn't move. Together they lifted him back on to the bed.

"Set up a xylazine and midazolam infusion, leave it for at least an hour to make sure that ketamine's gone." Doctor Hatch said. "We can't give him methadone yet, though he probably needs it. Get a set of fingerprints from him and take photographs, I bet someone is missing him. Then get on the phone to Truro. If he's not torture, what the hell is? Don't take any other patients until you've done it."

* * *

 **Code:** Series of measures, including CPR, used as a last ditch effort against death. Typically poorly successful.

 **Comminuted fractures:** Multiple fractures in the same bone

 **Ket:** Medic slang for ketamine. Ketamine can be used as a painkiller if managed very carefully, but can also cause very vivid hallucinations and coma.

 **Diazepam:** Multipurpose sedative.

 **Haematemesis:** Vomiting blood, except when mixed with stomach acid, blood turns lumpy and black-brown.

 **GI:** Gastrointestinal. Relating to the stomach or intestines.

 **Xylazine:** A strong, fast acting sedative

 **Midazolam:** Very similar to diazepam


	10. The Grid 1:30 PM

**27/10/07  
** **1:30 PM  
** **The Grid**

Malcolm Wynn-Jones was sitting in section D of Thames House at his desk, like an all-seeing being. He had the feeds of a dozen different cameras up on his screen, just watching. Various assets, various precious locations, some CCTV, some planted by agents or assets. He was a little concerned by a gang of youths milling around outside a safe house, it wasn't currently occupied, but even so. He should have a look at a satellite map, see if it looked like a likely place for miscreants to gather anyway.

The phone rang. Front desk was calling down. Hopefully not a bomb. Couldn't they have a quiet week once in a while?

"Hullo, section D."

* * *

 **Since this is so short, chapter 11 will be published immediately.**


	11. Hyde Park, London 4:10 PM

**27/10/07  
** **4:10 PM  
** **Hyde Park, London**

"Bit faster?" Adam asked.

"Yep." Wes replied and set off running, the ball cradled in his arm. As soon as Adam started to run after him, Wes threw the ball back to him, pretty well, Adam hardly had to break step to catch it. Adam pulled ahead with the ball and passed it back to Wes, then slowed down to let Wes pass him, and on they went. They were running across the grass of Hyde Park, throwing a rugby ball back and forth between them, no passing forward, no knock-ons. Wes was really improving. He didn't need the ball to land against his body in the same way any more, he could handle it in from a foot or so away most of the time and his throwing had gone from passing to 'somewhere over there' to passing to the centre of Adam's torso, and looking before he threw, not as he threw. The faster they went, the more Wes smiled, but the sloppier his technique got.

"'Scuse us!" Wes shouted at a pair of walkers on the path, just as he cut across in front of them.

"Sorry." Adam added as he cut behind them and reached for Wes's pass. It was just a bit too far ahead of him. He fumbled the catch and the ball fell to the ground ahead of him. "Knock on." He called.

"Sorry Dad."

"Never mind. Let's just try not to run straight across paths with people on them, eh?" Wes smiled apologetically. Adam felt his phone buzz in his pocket. "Sorry Wes, I have to check this." It was Ros's number. This was not going to be good news. One day. That was all he'd wanted.

"Yep?"

"Adam," It was Ros. "I know you said not to call you unless something was about to blow up-"

"Yes, I did." This was definitely going to cost him the rest of the day with Wes.

"Adam, they think they've got Zaf."

Adam froze. "What?"

"A police unit picked up an unidentified Middle Eastern male this morning, got him to hospital and took prints. They're a partial set compatible with Zaf. Malcolm said the positive predictive… something was about eighty percent."

"Is he talking?"

"No. Harry's orders are to verify as fast as we can and try to get on the trail of whoever took him before it goes cold, and find out what, if anything, Zaf gave up."

"Eleven days, Ros." That was a very long time for anyone to hold.

"We don't know what his condition is, it's possible he wasn't interrogated." But they'd assumed that he had been; moved Jo to a safehouse, got all Zaf's assets out… Made themselves as immune as possible to anything Zaf might give up. And the fact that he hadn't immediately declared himself under a safe name suggested that he couldn't declare himself.

"They didn't ask us for… anything." He was a bit restricted as to what he could say with Wes standing three feet away. "Do you want me in?" Wes's face fell.

"Yes."

"I'm out with Wes. I can't get to you quickly."

"Jo, Malcolm, Connie and I will get going, just get here when you can. Malcolm's only just called me, we haven't got a detailed plan yet."

"Okay, maybe two hours."

"See you then." She hung up. Adam turned to Wes.

"Wes, I'm really sorry."

"It's okay." He said. "We've had most of a day." Adam nodded. That was more than they'd had in a while. It was gone four. He sighed.

"Yeah, we have. I'll call Nana and Granddad to see if they can come and get you in an hour."

Wes nodded once. "Okay."


	12. The Grid 6:00 PM

**27/10/07  
** **6:00 PM  
** **The Grid**

"Right, catch me up." Adam said, walking on to the Grid. Jo was on the phone, so was Ros, Malcolm was walking towards him, Connie was at a computer. Harry was in his office, also on the phone.

"Border police stopped and searched a car this morning, this side of the channel tunnel, found a middle eastern man in his early thirties unconscious in the boot with no ID for him anywhere in the car." Malcolm said, without taking a breath. "They called an ambulance and sent him to William Harvey Hospital in Ashford, they took prints there and ran them through the missing persons database, obviously Zaf's on there. It's not a brilliant set of prints, whoever took them doesn't do it often and they only did one hand, but it narrows the search down to two on the database and the other one's female."

"Okay, how sure are we that this is Zaf, can we talk to him yet?"

"No." Jo called. "He didn't arrive conscious, they've transferred him out, I'm on hold waiting for one of the doctors who treated him."

"It's very likely to be Zaf, Adam." Malcolm said. "I'd say eighty to eighty-five percent, even with prints that bad."

"Photos?"

"That's what I'm after now." Jo called.

"Adam, go and fetch his ICE file." Harry said, walking in. Adam turned to walk out.

"Hello Doctor Hatch," He heard Jo say behind him. "I'm Gwen Phillips, I'm calling about the unidentified man you saw this morning, we think we may know who he is. What can you tell me about him?"

Adam came back a minute later, the sealed file in his hand. Jo stood up and came towards him.

"Adam, they've emailed photos to front desk, they'll be with us any minute. He said Zaf came in drugged, only woke up briefly and wasn't talking sense, but he sounded British."

"Okay, where is he now."

"He's en route to the Truro Centre." Jo said. Adam felt himself grimace. "What? What does that mean?"

"Torture. It's a specialist centre for torture victims." He answered shortly. Jo's eyes widened.

"The police have the driver." Ros said. "He's insisting he's only that, that he didn't know what he was carrying, but they're holding him for kidnap, GBH, possession with intent to supply and resisting arrest."

"Don't let them let him go. Until we know he wasn't involved in doing this to Zaf, we assume that he was. Get us his details too, let's see if we know him."

"Our priorities are as follows:" Harry said, holding out a hand for the file. "Firstly, to verify that this is Zaf Younis. Secondly, to apprehend his captors. Thirdly, to find out from Zaf what he did and did not give up."

"What are we going to tell his family?" Jo asked. "His mother kept on calling the flat. She's going spare."

"As little as possible. What do they think he does?"

"They think he's an interpreter." Adam said.

"She didn't even know he was missing." Jo said. "So far as she knows he just dropped off the face of the earth."

"We can't have her anywhere near him until we know he's sufficiently compus mentis to keep his cover intact." Harry said. Jo opened her mouth as though to protest, then seemed to think better of it.

"We need to tell her something Harry." Ros said. "Otherwise there'll be a stink when we do. We can say he was with a group in… Syria, Libya, Uzbekistan, somewhere like that that he was suspected of something by someone or other… It isn't difficult to fabricate that sort of thing. We can't hope to hide this from her completely."

"I'll go to Truro." Jo said.

"That's my job." Adam said. It wasn't just recognising Zaf, it was asking him what he'd given up, and that wasn't pleasant.

"Ros, Jo, talk the police in to giving us the driver." Harry ordered. "Adam, get on the road. Once we're certain this is Zaf we can invent something to keep his family quiet."

 **Note: I know that in the sixth episode of season three, Zaf tells Jo that his mother thinks he works in town planning, but I didn't realise that until this fic was almost finished, and it makes a fine mess of some aspects of the plot, so I am leaving it as it is.**

 **Second note: I am very grateful to Antonia for her reviews. If you notice, every new chapter is preceded by at least one review. This is quite intentional. If you want the story faster, review.**


	13. Ashford 8:50 PM

**27/10/07  
** **8:50 PM  
** **Ashford**

Doctor Mullin put her key in to her front door. She needed a shower, sleep and food, not necessarily in that order.

"Hey Laura." Her housemate called down from upstairs. She was on head and neck surgery, so didn't have to work as many weekends as Laura Mullin did.

"Hey." She called back.

"How was your shift?"

"Ah, vomity." She took off her coat and put her keys down. "Had two interesting cases and a very long phone conversation with a specialist unit in Cornwall." She stepped away from the door and in to the kitchen. Almost at once, someone rang the doorbell. She huffed in irritation and went back to the door. She didn't recognise the face she saw, so she put the chain on.

"Doctor Mullin?" The man asked, in a deep, slow American accent.

"Yes, who's asking?"

"May I come in? I need to talk to you." Laura Mullin hesitated.

"My flatmate is upstairs."

"That's fine, but I need to talk to you."

"Okay." She let him in.

"May I sit down?"

"Okay." She led him in to the sitting room. He sat down, she copied him.

"Doctor Mullin, my name is Finn Karowski, I am an agent of the CIA." Doctor Mullin felt her jaw drop slightly. She wasn't sure what she'd been expecting, but it hadn't been that. "I understand that you treated an Arab man today, you didn't know his name. He's early thirties, stands about five-ten five-eleven."

"Yeah, I did. Do you know who he is?"

"The man's name is Zaffar Younis, we've been trying to pin him down for weeks and it's imperative that we find him as quickly as possible."

"Why?"

"He's a very violent jihadist. We have good reason to believe he's masterminding a plot to bomb five or six middle schools in the US simultaneously, using the children themselves as bombers. He's good at making young boys see his way. If his plan goes off, we're talking maybe a hundred dead, almost all of them under fourteen. He fled the US a month ago, but we think he's still running the show."

"That… He's not in a fit state to run anything. He's been tortured." Finn Karowski raised his eyebrows.

"That's news to me. How bad?"

"Pretty bad. I don't think he could have walked even if he hadn't been drugged."

"He was drugged?" Doctor Mullin nodded once. "That sounds like in-fighting in a terrorist cell to me. They're a bunch of vision-driven maniacs, when the visions don't line up, things get very violent. And a lot of jihadi cells have drugs, they get money that way. If they have links to groups around Kandahar, they often buy drugs straight from the cartels that run those hills. Even if his cell's breaking up, we need to find him. He might be willing to snitch on the rest if they've turned on him." Doctor Mullin ran a hand back through her hair. "I know it's a lot to take in, but we don't' have a lot of time."

"Why come to me? Why not go through hospital records?"

"Because to do that, we need MI5's approval, which can take days or even weeks. Often it's much quicker just to go to a sensible professional."

Doctor Mullin hesitated. "Can I see some ID?"  
"I don't dare carry any on this operation. If these jihadis found me, if they had any reason to think for a moment I was CIA, my people would find me in twelve different dumpsters two days later." She didn't reply at once. He set a hand on her knee. "Doctor Mullin, I just need to know where you sent him. This won't come back to you, and there are a hundred children's lives riding on this."

Silence hung for almost a full minute.

"Truro."

 **Note: Kandahar is a region of Afghanistan in which opium poppies are grown. The Canadian Army took most of its losses there in the Afghan war, a lot of those due to IEDs.**

 **The race is on.**


	14. The Truro Centre 10:45 PM

**27/10/07  
** **10:45 PM  
** **The Truro Centre**

Adam got out of the car and rolled his shoulders. It had not been a smooth drive. It was pitch black out here, except for the lights on in the centre itself. It was late, nearly eleven PM. He took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. Spooks often weren't well received here and this place didn't exactly hold fond memories for him. It had been ten years now. He had a job to do. He was going to do it. Adam set his jaw and strode towards the front door.

It was locked, of course it was locked, but there was an intercom just beside it. He pressed it.

"Hello?" A male voice asked.

"Hello, I'm a Security Service Agent here to positively identify a patient of yours, my section head should have called you to say I was coming." There was a moment's pause.

"If I say 'yellow elephant'?"

"I say 'red ceiling'." It was one of those combinations that must have made sense to Harry. The door buzzed as it opened. Adam walked in. A lone man sat at the security desk.

"ID please?" He asked. Adam handed it over, his real ID. He wasn't going to faff about with false identities here. If Zaf was stoned he might blow his cover anyway, and everyone working here had signed the Official Secrets Act and been vetted almost as thoroughly as the people at Thames House.

"Name of the person you're looking for?"

"We think he's Zaffar Younis."

"Alright, he's in the ACTU, I'll just call someone to take you down to him. Please take a seat." Adam sat down. They'd stepped up security here in the past decade.

A couple of minutes later, a woman maybe five years Adam's junior emerged from a doorway, solid blue top, black trousers. Nurse.

"Evening Eric." She said to the watchman with a soft Yorkshire accent.

"Evening. This man's here to ID the new patient."

"Ah, right, come this way." She offered a hand to him. He shook it. She looked faintly familiar. "I'm Tia Yates, I'm on the night shift tonight.

"I'm Adam."

"Nice to meet you."

"How's he been?"

"Stable." She replied. "I'm not a doctor, I'm not really supposed to comment. We've been keeping him heavily drugged, the referring hospital let him come round and he didn't take it well."

"I need to talk to him. I can wait a day or so, but not much more."

"You'd need to talk to the attending doctor, he'll be up at seven. He's gone to bed." There was a moment's silence. "Have I met you? I feel like I've seen you before."

"No, I don't think so." Adam lied smoothly. If she'd met him when he'd been here a decade ago, he didn't want to be reminded of it.

"My mistake then." She tapped a code (4692, he'd remember that) in to a keypad next to a door and led him through it.

She stopped and turned to face him.

"Right, how well do you know Zaffar?"

"Quite well."

"Have you worked with recent torture victims before?"

"Yes."

"So you understand that he's not going to look like himself, he's not going to behave like himself. He's had just about the worst possible time."

"I know." Adam said. "Nevertheless, I need to see him."

"OK, so long as you understand. And, by the way, I am not going to let you make him talk to you. He's had enough of that." She pushed the door open.

A man lay on the bed. His hands were bandaged, he was motionless, his skin was dappled with burns and bruises and there were cuts at various stages of healing along his forearms and a few on his face, there was an oxygen cannula up his nose, but it was unmistakably Zaf.

"Oh Zaf I'm sorry." Adam breathed. He'd left him. He'd left him with the mercs and run. He'd though he was leaving him to die. He'd made his peace with that. This was different.

"When you've been here a while," Tia started after a minute or so, "you start to learn to tell who did it. Assad do a lot of blunt trauma with plastic or rubber hoses, they're quite distinctive. The CIA, you get very distinctive wrist injuries, genital infections and often water aversions. The Serbs used to go for the face when the genocide was going on… He's not any of those. This was done by someone who knew how to cause a lot of pain without risking killing him too quickly." They'd suspected it was Mercs; mercenary torturers. They were, to Adam's mind, the lowest kind of human.

"What are the most significant injuries?" Zaf still seemed to have both his eyes and all his limbs.

"In terms of affecting him for the rest of his life, hands and feet. He has a lot of broken bones in both. We've strapped them up for now and taken X-rays. The surgeon will have a proper look at them in the morning, see what's fixable. We don't think there are major internal injuries, but they do sneak up on you sometimes. We're also treating him for a fever, we think the cause of that is an infected wound in his groin or the localised pneumonia, but we're not a hundred percent sure."

There was a muffled cry from another room. Tia spun on her heel.

"Fatimah. Excuse me." She walked out. Adam took out his phone and pressed one on speed dial. He laid a hand on Zaf's shoulder.

"Zaf." He pushed gently. "Zaf." He didn't respond at all. The phone stopped ringing.

"Harry Pearce."

"Harry, we have a positive ID, this is definitely him."

"You're sure."

"He's right in front of me."

"Put him on."

"He's out, I think they're drugging him out."

"Then hold position until you know what he did and did not give up."

"Alright. Are you going to call the others?"

"What?"

"Ros, Jo and Malcolm, and Connie if you like, are you going to call them?"

"Yes I suppose I should."

 **Note: The injuries described by Tia as typical of torture by Assad and the CIA are based on factual reports. Those attributed to the Kosovo genocide are not.**

 **Also, the hints that Adam has been hospitalised at the Truro Centre are based on the fact that we know Adam has been tortured at least three times (Syria, Serbia and the Yemen). This is explored in my other fic, 'Come Home'**


	15. Holloway 10:00 AM

**28/10/07  
** **10:00 AM  
** **Holloway**

Ros put her handbrake on and turned the engine off. She sighed and ran a hand backwards through her hair. This was an unenviable job. She was parked in a residential street near Holloway, the listed address for a Nidhi Younis, Zaf's mother. Ros checked her mirror and got out of the car. The street was a terrace, there were people moving around, women pushing prams, children in groups, even at this time on a Sunday morning.

She walked up to the door and knocked. After a moment, she heard footsteps behind it, and a woman opened the door. She was probably in her mid fifties, she'd thrown a scarf over her hair, Ros could see Zaf in the lines of her face.

"Mrs. Younis?"

"Yes?"

"Mrs. Younis, my name is Ruth Malone. I work for the government. I'm here to talk to you about Zaffar." She didn't faint. She didn't cry out. She barely moved, but a stillness came over her.

"Is he alright?"

"May I come in?"

Nidhi Younis hesitated. "I have a student with me. I must send her home first. Please come in." Ros followed her over the threshold. "Please sit down." She indicated a small sitting room. Ros walked in slowly. In another room, Nidhi Younis was talking to another woman in another language. Urdu perhaps? Ros looked around at the room. There was enough space to sit perhaps five people down if they were willing to squash up. A box of brightly coloured children's toys was just visible under a small table. There were photos along the windowsill, just this side of the net curtain. Ros looked. Some of the photos were older than others. Two children, a boy and a girl, grinned up at her from one in primary school uniforms. The girl was taller than the boy, her arm around his shoulders. In the pictures, they grew. The height gap started to close, the girl started to cover her hair, the primary school uniforms changed to secondary school ones, the boy suddenly grew, then it was obvious that he was Zaf. The girl beamed, now dressed in white, standing arm in arm with a man who wasn't Zaf. The front door opened and closed again. Nidhi Younis walked in to the room after Ros. Ros sat down.

"About Zaffar?" Nidhi Younis prompted.

"Mrs. Younis, please do sit down." Ros said, quite firmly. The other woman sat, her face set. She was expecting to hear that he was dead. "I understand that about a month ago, Zaffar contacted you and said he was going to be away for a while."

"Two to three weeks." She said. "It has been nearly five weeks now."

"During those three weeks," Ros continued, "he was in Syria, as planned, acting as an Arabic-speaking interpreter for a British diplomatic unit. His operation was thought to be a very safe one, no military or secret service involvement. For reasons we are not yet certain of, Zaffar's entire unit was abducted on what was supposed to be the last day of their operation. For days we simply had no idea where they were, who had taken them or why. They were retrieved and returned to the UK yesterday night, we still know very little about what happened, but it appears they were all questioned aggressively while they were held prisoner."

"Questioned aggressively." Nidhi Younis repeated, looking at the floor between them. She looked up at Ros. "Is that your way of saying they were tortured?"

"The details are very uncertain at this stage. All of the men are injured-"

"But they are alive."

"Yes, yes they are alive."

Nidhi Younis took a deep breath. "Where is he?"

"He's being cared for at a specialist hospital for people who've-"

"When can I see him?"

"When the doctors say he can have visitors, we will let you know, and arrange transport to get you to him if he's willing to see you."

"I am his mother. It should not be his choice. When will that be?"

"I don't know. We can't get near him either. I understand that-"

Nidhi Younis got to her feet suddenly and turned to face the back of the room. "Mrs Murphy, do you have children."

"I…" Ros hesitated. "No."

Nidhi Younis turned back to face her. "Then you do not understand. You do not understand what it is to tell me that my son has been… tortured and that I cannot see him."

"Truly I am sorry." Ros said. "I'm sorry that this happened, I'm sorry that I have to do this to you, but there's nothing in my power to do. I can only tell you what I've been told, and what I've told you so far is more or less it."

Nidhi Younis hissed and raised a hand towards her head. She turned one way, then the other, as though casting about for another person. She made a strange sound, as though she'd meant to say something but stopped herself. "Will he survive?"

"They think so."


	16. The Grid 10:15 AM

**28/10/07  
** **10:15 AM  
** **The Grid**

Jo jerked fully upright. She'd been on hold for about fifteen minutes waiting for a police chief to be ready to speak to her. She'd given up last night when she'd been told they didn't deal with custody stuff between ten PM and seven AM. She'd got in to Thames House shortly after seven to keep up the pressure to get the driver transferred to MI5's custody.

"Good morning Chief Inspector, my name is Gwen Phillips, I'm calling from Thames House. I spoke to an Inspector Murray last night about a man identifying himself as Jason Brewer."

"Yes, I can see that. You asked us not to offer him bail under any circumstances."

"Yes, I did. Can I ask if anything has changed with you overnight?"

"No Miss Phillips, he's still insisting he was just a driver and that he didn't know what his cargo was."

"Well we've acquired new information overnight."

"Oh really?"

"We've verified that the man he was carrying was an MI5 agent and that the agent has been tortured," Jo heard the man react. "Severely. So as you can imagine this is now a security issue. We need to question Mr Brewer ourselves, see if he knows anything sensitive that could have come from our agent, if not, see if he can lead us to whoever paid him." There was a silence. "Chief Inspector, this isn't about power or about wanting to see to ourselves without needing the police, without the police we'd never have found our man. This is about containing the damage that could be done by what our officer could have given up under duress."

"If he _is_ just a driver?"

"If he's just a driver we can pass him back to you for a nice easy Drugs and Accessory to Kidnap conviction, but the people who hired him might try to assassinate him. If he was involved in torturing our officer, we need to pursue that prosecution."

The policeman sighed. "Okay. He'll be at Thames House by secure transport by 0900 tomorrow."

Jo hissed softly. "Is there any way you could get him to us sooner? We need that information as soon as possible."

"I can try Miss Phillips, but I can't promise you anything."

"Thank you." Jo said. "I'll pop you through to the desk to arrange that." She hit the 'transfer call' sequence and her line went dead. She put the phone down and stretched. Harry had called her a bit after eleven last night to say Adam had confirmed it was Zaf, and that he was alive. She'd texted Adam to ask how Zaf was, Adam had replied to say that Zaf was too doped to tell.

Jo dropped her head in to her hands. She was getting tougher, she knew she was, but this was getting to her. Part of it was what had happened, she'd been warned in training that spooks didn't have the protection that, say, soldiers did, so they could be treated very badly if they got caught. She knew Adam and Fiona had been tortured before, she knew it had happened to Adam twice. It was a horrible thing to imagine happening to someone.

Part of it was that it was Zaf. She'd been very grateful several times to Adam for telling her to move in with Zaf, it had been helpful not to have to worry about what she might say if she was drunk, to have someone at home she could talk things over with in the evenings. It was useful to hear him say yes, everyone feels that way at some point, to have someone to remind her that she wasn't the first person to go through this, that he, Adam, Ros, even Harry, had worked through it and come out still sane. Well, still functional. They'd picked up groceries for each other, learned what the other one would and wouldn't eat (she'd been amazed to find he hated the smell of bacon), cooked for each other, nagged each other to get out of the bathroom. They'd ended up in bed together a couple of times, in a way that wasn't surprising; two people living together, living pretty stressful lives, only able to confide in each other… She didn't regret it. She'd wanted to. But she thought that this might have been easier if they hadn't. She wasn't his girlfriend, there was nothing like a promise between them. Just an understanding. An understanding that the other one was there, the other one would listen, and understand. She picked up her phone. It didn't ring for long.

"Yep?"

"Adam,"

"Hey Jo, any progress?"

"Ros is going to talk to his mother, the cops have agreed to hand us the driver."

"That's good. We've got the photo of the driver you sent us. I'll show it to Zaf when he's awake."

"He's still under?"

"It's their painkillers, they tend to keep people unconscious. So they tell me, anyway. They're tapering the dose off, he's looking less deeply asleep, but he's not up to talking yet."

"Okay."

"When's the driver going to arrive?"

"By nine tomorrow morning."

"Okay, tell Harry I want to be the one in control of this."

"Okay."

* * *

 **Note: I wish to declare at this stage that I do not necessarily agree with anything that any character thinks, says or does in any fiction I write.**


	17. The Truro Centre 10:10 AM

**28/10/07  
** **10:10 AM  
** **The Truro Centre**

Jo hung up. Adam shifted. He'd dozed a bit in the chair overnight. He hadn't wanted to leave Zaf in case he woke up. He'd spoken to one of the doctors, a man called Seymore, about tapering down Zaf's medication to let him wake up, the doctor had agreed, on the condition that if Zaf complained of pain, they'd take the dose back up. Doctor Seymore had said that a surgeon was coming in later to have a serious think about fixing Zaf's mangled hands and feet.

The door opened. Adam looked up. A man wearing a white coat walked in.

"Who are you?" Adam asked, stretching.

"Doctor Meeson." The man replied in a deep, slow American accent, putting a gloved hand in to his pocket.

"Where's your ID tag?" Adam asked.

"In my locker, I forgot it."

"Then how did you get through the door?" Adam stood up.

"One of the nurses let me in." He drew out a bottle, a syringe and a needle and started assembling things.

"Hold on." Adam placed himself between the man and Zaf. "Forgive me for being paranoid, it's my job. I want to see some ID before you touch him."

"I'm a doctor, Sir, please let me do my job."

"Show me some ID."

"You show me some. Who the hell are you anyway?"

"Adam Carter, you show me -"

The man moved very suddenly. Years of field work had made Adam sharp. He saw the man's hand move, go for the inside of his coat. Before he could see what it was grasping, Adam threw his weight against the man. The man managed a pace back before he fell, metal glinted in his left hand. Gun or knife? Either was bad.

"Help!" Adam shouted, grabbing for the man's left hand with his right. The hand moved away downwards. He missed. He shifted away from the metal. The man pushed him off and pulled away. Knife. It was a knife. Adam grabbed for the knife hand again. "Help me!" This time he caught it. The man got his legs under himself, Adam pulled down and in to overbalance him. Suddenly the man came with him and fell towards Adam. Sharp pain burst along his side. He cried out. The door opened again. He'd let go of the man's knife hand. The man yelled in shock and jumped to his feet, almost pulling Adam with him. There were two people there, the doctor from earlier and the day nurse. The man broke free of Adam and ran past them.

"Call security!" Somebody shouted. Adam sprinted after the man. Blood was seeping down his side. Every stride pulled at the injury. It wasn't bad. He was still standing. The man dashed back through the corridors, then suddenly turned out of a fire exit. He knew exactly where he was going. Adam didn't. And Adam was already bleeding. This was a bad idea. But he couldn't just let the man go. The man jumped a low hedge and kept running out towards the car park. Through the car park, he kept running, past two people crouched beside a third person on the ground, down towards the checkpoint at the gate. Adam was struggling now.

"Stop him!" He bellowed. The gate guard didn't react fast enough, he came stumbling out of his booth, but the man was already at the barrier, dropping to roll under it. The guard started running. The man disappeared from sight. Adam reached the barrier and looked up and down the road. The man was disappearing up the road on a bicycle.

"Get a car-" Adam started, then stopped himself. There were dozens of little roads and tracks round here that that man would be able to get up on a bike. He'd have needed thirty men to catch him, at least. He didn't have three. He'd got away. Adam swore.

"Mate, you're bleeding." The guard said.

"Thank you, I had noticed." Adam pressed an arm to his throbbing side and limped back up the track. He took out his phone. It was picked up within fifteen seconds.

"Hello?"

"Malcolm, can you get in to the CCTV footage for the Truro Centre?"

"Should be able to, it's a level four government facility. Why?"

"Look at the footage for the last fifteen minutes for room… ACTU 4, that's Zaf's room. You should – ow - see a man with a white coat walk in. Try to ID him. If you can, put a police alert out for him."

"May I ask why?"

"Because he just knifed me and ran off."

"Adam! Are you alright?"

"It's not deep Malcolm, I'm fine. Just get a tag on this guy, he was after Zaf." He hung up.

On his way back through the car park, Adam had a better look at the nurses and the collapsed man. There was a lot of blood on the collapsed man. One of the nurses was speaking to him.

"-ambulance will be here in a few minutes. I've seen you fix worse wounds than this, Doctor Meeson, you're going to be fine." So this was Doctor Meeson. Bits of the last few minutes began to click together in Adam's head. He gritted his teeth against the pain in his side. The man who'd attacked him had stabbed Doctor Meeson in the car park, taken his coat and his ID card and got in to the building that way. He'd known where to look for Zaf and come in with something to put in his drip. Adam was betting it wasn't antibiotics. And he'd jumped as soon as he'd heard Adam's name. That had been the moment he'd decided to drop the subterfuge. Presumably Zaf had given his name up; Adam Carter, section head, blond man, six foot, blue eyes, thirty-eight years old. That was probably enough to make a would-be assassin cut and run. Adam gritted his teeth and kept walking.

The fire escape he'd come out of was still open. He made his way back to Zaf's room. This was blown. If you'd tortured a man in the UK and lost track of him, Truro was a sensible place to search, but that man hadn't been searching. He'd known. He'd known exactly where Zaf was. How many people knew Zaf was here? The staff here, of course, but if one of them had snitched surely it was simpler to get them to do the wetwork, and they were all vetted nearly as thoroughly as Thames House staff. Section D knew; Harry, Ros, Jo, Malcolm… it wouldn't have been them. That was so unlikely it wasn't worth mentioning. Who'd sent Zaf here? It had been the staff at that hospital in Kent, there were probably a dozen people there who knew, plus the drivers who'd actually delivered Zaf here. That was the most likely source of the leak.

Adam reminded himself sharply that he couldn't necessarily blame the snitch for snitching, given what these men had done to Zaf.

The doctor and the nurse were still in Zaf's room.

"There's a man in the car park who's been stabbed." Adam said, making a bee-line for the chair. "I suggest you go and see to him." He sat down

"We've heard." Doctor Seymore said. "It came through on the intercom, Doctor Lee is already there. And is that blood yours?" Adam nodded once. "Show me." He pulled Adam's arm away from the wound.

Adam winced. "I don't think it's that deep."

"Neither do I. I may not be a surgeon, but I'm confident I can deal with this. Strip off." Adam started to. "Emily," The doctor said to the nurse. "Could you go and ask Sasha if he'd be willing to give a shirt over to this man? He looks about Sasha's size."

"You okay here?"

"It's only going to be Steristrips. I'm sure I can manage that." The nurse walked out. "What happened exactly?" Adam told him as briefly as he could manage, the doctor numbed, cleaned and strapped up the wound.

"As you thought, it isn't deep." The doctor said as he finished. "Keep it clean and dry for three days, then go and get this re-checked. I can't imagine it will cause a problem." Adam picked up the shirt the nurse had left and put it on. He still couldn't feel the injury.

"What did you do?" Adam asked

"Sorry?"

"I can't feel it at all, what did you do?"

"Stop poking it. I knocked out the nerves to the area, they'll come back in a couple of hours." Adam looked at the man, somewhere between amazement and alarm. "I'm an anaesthiologist. Divinum sedare dolorem. Our job is to relieve pain."

"Well you're good at it."

"Thank you. As for him," The doctor indicated Zaf. "We stopped his ketamine nearly half an hour ago. He should be waking up soon."

"Good."

"If he seems in pain, call us and we'll up his doses again."

"I will." Adam said. He wouldn't. He needed Zaf lucid enough to talk to. Zaf would understand that. If that meant half an hour more of pain unfortunately that price had to be paid.

 **Note: 'Divinum sedare dolorem' is the maxim of the national college of anaesthesiologists. It translates to 'it is divine to relieve pain'**


	18. The Truro Centre 10:50 AM

**28/10/07  
** **10:50 AM  
** **The Truro Centr** e

Zaf came to slowly. He blinked and twitched, moved his mouth, made sounds that weren't speech… Adam talked at him. The same sort of inane, meaningless stuff you said to dying men and to babies. "It's OK." And "You're safe now." Over and over again until they were nothing but sound. It was maybe another fifteen minutes before Zaf looked at Adam and seemed to see.

"Zaf, can you hear me?" Zaf nodded slightly. "Can you speak?" He tried, his voice was faint and cracked, barely comprehensible. "Right. I'll give you ten minutes." Zaf coughed and swallowed, grimacing. He made a sound that might have been a request for water. Adam looked around. There was a sink in the corner, and a few plastic cups. He put half an inch of water in the bottom of one and went back over to Zaf. Zaf pulled his shoulders a couple of inches off the bed. Adam put a hand between his shoulder blades to keep him there. Zaf raised a hand to reach for the water and barked in pain.

"Hand." He said. His voice was still barely a whisper.

"Alright then. Come here." Adam said. He put the cup to Zaf's mouth and let him take the water slowly. Once he'd finished, Adam sat back down and waited for the ten minutes to run out.

"Do you think you can talk now?"

"Yeah." It didn't sound much like Zaf, it obviously hurt him to speak, but it was comprehensible.

"Right. I talk first." Adam said. "The first thing I need to say is thank you. You let them take you to save my life and keep the op viable. Malcolm recons we'd have had half a million dead in London inside a week if we hadn't got it under control so fast. We wouldn't have managed it if you hadn't… So thank you." Zaf didn't reply, but Adam could tell he understood him. "Where's the last place you remember being?"

"Don't know where it was."

"Where you were being held?"

Zaf nodded.

"Okay, we don't know that either. Whoever had you was trying to get you out of the country in the half term rush. They got stopped at customs, which was sheer blind luck. Border police searched the car and found you, sent you to hospital, hospital tagged you as a torture victim and sent you here. Truro. Do you remember any of that?"

Zaf shook his head. "They said they were going to kill me." Adam said nothing. "When they were done."

Adam nodded once. "They often say that, almost never do it."

"No, I wanted them to." His voice was still slurred, it was obviously still hurting him to speak, but he went on. "I wanted them to kill me. It was-"

"Zaf, stop." Adam said firmly. Zaf fell silent, still breathing too hard. "You've come through over a week of the worst humans can do to each other. I'm not going to tell you the next couple of months are going to be easy because they're not. They're going to be awful. But they are going to be a world better than what you've just come from. Whatever happens now the worst is behind you."

Zaf didn't look convinced.

"Zaf, I've been there, three bloody times. Every time I thought it was the end. Every time, I've ended up in here and walked out again. That's how you ended up in our unit in Six. Then two months later we were pulling arms dealers out of hotel windows together. It can only get better from here." Maybe he should drop this now; Zaf was as good as ignoring him. "And we have the driver. Jo sweet-talked the police in to giving him to us, he'll be at Thames House by nine tomorrow. Our next question is-" Adam picked the printed mug shot up from the floor. "-do you know him?" He held the photo up for Zaf. Even before Zaf nodded, Adam could read the answer on his face. Adam smiled briefly. "Right then. The weekend has worked against us, but we still might break him in time. I can try, anyway." A dark look of satisfaction had settled across Zaf's face. "You know what I have to ask you, Zaf." Zaf nodded once. He knew what was coming. "We made our guesses of course, we moved Jo, she's fine, we're certain that all but one of your assets are safe, we're less sure about the one in East Atlantic Oil, Edward Owens, but we're not sure he's been lifted either. He's just tricky to contact. By the look of your records he always was. What else did-?"

"Everything." Zaf said. "Everything they asked, everything I knew. I tried, I just… I couldn't do it. I couldn't… I wasn't strong enough, I gave them everything."

"Zaf." Adam cut him off. "You were with a professional pack of torturers who weren't bound by any law for eleven days. Of course you broke. I wouldn't expect Harry to last four days like that. They put you through hell, you gave us time to get your assets and Jo to safety. That's all we ever need. The rest of it is awful, but it doesn't harm anyone else. Not if the rest of us have done our job properly." Zaf didn't argue back. "We assumed assets and Jo. Is there anything else we need to be aware of?"

"Names of the whole section. They asked addresses. They didn't believe that I didn't know."

Adam nodded. They almost never believed you when you said you didn't know. "Did you make it up in the end?" Zaf nodded once. "Did it work?" Zaf nodded again. "Anything else?"

"Door codes."

"For Thames House?" Adam asked. Zaf nodded. "We assumed that, they all get changed every few days anyway, the ones that don't, you'd need to have got through the pods to get to them. Your family?"

"Didn't ask."

"Any other names or addresses?" Zaf shook his head. "Is there anything else? Anything I'm missing?"

"Names of groups we're investigating."

"Do you know who they were? Who hired them?"

Zaf shook his head. "They just said they were professionals, that they knew exactly what they were doing."

"Accents? Dialect?"

"Americans, or putting it on."

"Zaf, this is really important. They want you dead."

"Should have killed me then."

"Zaf, I'm serious, they've tried once this morning."

"What?"

"Someone stabbed a doctor and stole his ID to get in, then tried to get past a paranoid spook to spike your drip."

"Where is he now?"

"Somewhere outside. He got away." Adam saw the fear creep across Zaf's face again. "We're upping security here. I passed it to Malcolm over an hour ago. He'll have something figured out by now. But I can't stay." Adam stood up. "If anything else comes back to you… you know what to do." Zaf nodded, his jaw sort of set, probably as near set as Zaf could get it without hurting himself. "I need to get back to London. Apart from anything else, I've got to make this guy's-" He gestured to the photo of the driver. "-life hell for a few days. You'll be OK, they do have armed guard here, they'll be vigilant now. And whatever else, the worst is over."

Adam, having had a long conversation with the man on the security desk about exactly what he was going to do to make sure a hostile agent couldn't just waltz in with lethal drugs and a knife again, got back in his car. On a Sunday afternoon the drive back to London would be slow, he might as well get going. He had a couple of phone calls to make, he could do that stuck in one of the inevitable traffic jams.

The first call was to Jo, just to say that Zaf was alive and still sane, but that he'd be out of work for a while.

"What's… Is he..? I don't even know what to ask you Adam."

"You can ask me more face to face tomorrow, but he's told me that the driver is one of them."

"So what will we do with him?"

"You're not going to go near him. I'm going to get him to tell us who and where the rest of the cell are."

"You mean-?"

"Don't ask Jo, deniability. Anyway, Zaf'll be out for a couple of months I expect, so wherever you move in to you can have it to yourself for a while."

"What… What did they do that'll keep him…"

"It's his hands mostly. They broke a lot of bones. They think they can fix it, but it'll take time." The mental stuff would dog him for longer, but it shouldn't be incapacitating for that long.

"Okay."

"Are you still on the Grid?"

"No, I'm at the safehouse."

"See you in the morning then." Adam hung up.

The next was to Harry.

"Harry, the driver's lying. Zaf ID'd him as a torturer. When is he arriving with us?"

"Ten tonight, the police are ahead of schedule for once."

"I'm imagining we want him to tell us who they are and where the rest of his unit is?"

"Yes, we do."

"And would you like me to be prepared for the fact that he may not want to tell us?"

"Yes."

"Would you like me to take care of it?"

Harry hesitated. "Yes. But I want to make it quite clear that I expect you to treat him as he deserves, in accordance with the ethical principles of this service." That was an order. As he deserves. Adam wouldn't go to a third of that. He couldn't leave a mark on the man.

"Understood. Can you make sure he doesn't sleep tonight?"

"That far, I think I can stretch."

"And, Harry, we've got another problem."

"I know. Malcolm reported to me. The leak most likely came from the general hospital. Malcolm has procured a list of staff who had direct contact with Zaf, we need to find out how this leak occurred, and who we're up against."

"Zaf said they had American accents, so did the attempted assassin."

"And so does the driver, Jason Brewer, or whatever his name actually is. The police sent a tape of his initial interview. But that doesn't help us much, they're not likely to be the CIA."

"No, the means of torture are wrong, they're not allowed to draw teeth or nails anymore, and what they were asking was far too general."

"Not to mention, snatching a British spook on British soil would be a very, very foolish move."

"So American mercenaries?" Adam braked sharply. An idiot in a convertible had just pulled out too close in front of him.

"That's my assumption. When will you be back in London?"

"Six or seven PM?"

"Go home, eat and rest. You'll have a long day tomorrow."

 **Note: I repeat at this point: I do not necessarily agree with anything any character thinks, says or does.**


	19. The Grid 7:00 AM

**29/10/07  
** **7:00 AM  
** **The Grid**

Adam stood in the antechamber next to the cell their man was being held in, taking every single thing out of his pockets. He was just going to make the man aware of his situation. Nothing heavy yet. He nodded to the guard, who opened the door. He walked in.

"Good… well, I suppose it is morning now." He sat down at the table, opposite his target, who looked unsettled and tired. "Please confirm your name."

"I already told you. I'm Jason Brewer and I swear to God I didn't know what was in the bag. They just led me up to the car and said 'drive to this address in Calais, there's two thousand in cash waiting for you there'. I swear if I'd known it was a man-" Adam held up a hand.

"Now isn't that interesting?" He set the man's passport down on the table. "This passport number is registered to a Michael Neil who lives in Newcastle, and reported this passport missing a few days ago. If you look carefully at the edges, you can see where…" Adam smiled. "I'm letting professional interest run away with me. Long story short, it's a fake. It's a very good fake, I'm impressed, but it is a fake." There was a long silence. "So why don't you tell me your real name?" There was another very long silence. The man looked down. Adam leaned forwards. "I don't think you understand the gravity of your position. You've been caught trying to smuggle an interesting variety of drugs and a bound man with no fingernails left and burns all over him out of the country with a fake passport and a fake child. No jury is going to like that. So I'm going to ask you again. What is your name?"

The man hesitated. "If I talk, can you protect me?"

"Who from?"

"Can you protect me?"

"We can, doesn't mean we will. Who from?"

The man hissed. "The US feds." Adam raised his eyebrows. "Drugs charges. I got framed, so I ran. I'm an ex cop. I'll get killed if I go to jail."

"Okay, if you do well enough for us, we may be able to talk the feds in to not taking you. Your name."

The man hesitated. "Finn Goldman." Adam did not believe him.

"Next question, do you know who this man is?" Adam set a picture of Zaf on the table.

"No." Adam didn't believe that either.

"You should do. He spent an uncomfortable few hours in your car."

"He was the guy..? I told you, I never saw him. I never saw what was in the bag. I just needed money real bad."

"How did they contact you?"

"A man followed me home, Arab guy, I'd guess Afghan, right after I'd had trouble with the bank, and said I could make two thousand in a day. I didn't ask too many questions. He gave me a rendez-vous point and a time."

"When was this?"

"Two days ago."

"Where?"

"The rendez-vous was a service station on the M25."

Adam shook his head. "No, where did you torture this man?"

"I didn't! I picked up a package. I never saw him!"

"Now you have a problem." Adam said softly. "Do you know what your problem is?"

"That I'm being falsely accused of torturing someone?"

"Your problem" Adam almost whispered. "Is that this man survived. He's conscious and he's talking." Adam saw fear flicker across the man's face. "Do you know what he said when we showed him your photo?" The man had frozen. "He said you'd tortured him. So I'm going to ask you one more time. Who are you, really?"

He was met with a stony stare and silence. Adam smiled.

"Professional torturers. You think that just because you do it, you can withstand it. You think that because you can pull out a man's fingernails or put a hot iron in his crotch then walk away and have dinner with East Enders, you can take whatever I can do to you in your stride." Adam dropped his voice again and leaned closer. "Let me tell you, it's very, very different where you're sitting now." The man grabbed for Adam's throat. Adam grabbed the man's wrist and broke the hold before the guard even got to him. He stood up suddenly, gritting his teeth against the pain in his side, and twisted the man's arm, sending both chairs tumbling over. He pushed the man to the ground. He growled and spluttered in protest.

"You see." Adam said. "It's much easier to be stronger when you outnumber your victim, when you can bind his hands, deprive him of food, sleep, water…" Adam stood up. "I'm going to leave you now, give you time to consider whether you're really prepared for what will happen if you don't cooperate."


	20. The Grid 7:30 AM

**28/10/07  
** **7:30 AM  
** **The Grid**

"Thank you all for coming in early." Harry said. "But as I'm sure you can appreciate, we've got rather a lot to do." He took his seat. Adam, Ros, Jo, Connie and Malcolm did the same. "Adam, have you looked at Jason Brewer yet?"

Adam nodded. "Or Finn Goldman or whatever name he's giving himself."

"No joy then." Harry asked.

"It's early in the day yet."

"Need I remind you, Adam, that this man was caught forty-eight hours ago. Our window is closing fast."

"I know Harry."

"In the interests of bringing everyone up to speed," Harry said, "there are two main areas of interest for today. The first is Adam's responsibility, I will not be directly involved, it involves asking our Mr Brewer, or whatever he's called, to inform our search for Zaf's captors. The second is to find out how they knew where Zaf was so quickly."

"It wasn't an unreasonable guess Harry." Malcolm said. "Most torture victims that end up in the UK end up in Truro."

"True, but its location is relatively secret. They weren't twelve hours behind us. And I doubt they arrived twelve hours after Adam and immediately attacked. Sneaking in with a doctor's ID and the means to kill quietly is a planned attack. They even knew which part of the hospital he was in. The leak is a lead. We use it. Malcolm has a list of medical personnel directly involved with Zaf who are likely to know where he was transferred to."

"It's a Mrs Hodgeson, a nurse, and Doctors Mullin and Hatch. I have addresses and work schedules for today. There are other staff who'd have access to the information, but those are the three most likely to know immediately."

"None of them are missing, are they?" Adam asked.

"Mrs Hodgeson came in to work last night, Doctor Hatch was working most of Sunday, Doctor Mullin hasn't had a shift since the one in which she had contact with Zaf." Malcolm replied.

"Connie, how comfortable are you with interrogation?" Harry asked.

"More than comfortable enough, I assure you."

"In that case, Ros, go with Jo and chase up the medics. Find out who told whom what, and stay alert. Do not use real names, do not split up. Adam and Connie, get what we need out of that man. Keep this need to know, you know the rules." Adam nodded, so did Connie. Harry knew he was taking a risk here. Adam had it within him to be very aggressive, so aggressive that he might compromise deniability. Hopefully Connie would be able to rein him in on her own, without needing his help. "Malcolm, do what you can to help Adam and Connie."

"Without even a name, that'll be difficult."

"Try. Meeting done." All five of them got up at once.

"Malcolm-," Adam started. "-he said he had a conviction in the USA, I think that might actually be true. You've got his prints, see if you can get anything useful from the Americans."

"With or without telling them?"

"Without." Ros cut in. "I'm still not convinced the CIA didn't run this."

"They didn't do the dirty work." Adam said. "The methods were wrong."

"Doesn't mean they didn't pay for it."

"Sneaking in to American databases isn't easy." Malcolm said. "It'll take time."

"We don't have time."


	21. William Harvey Hospital, Ashford 9:50 AM

**29/10/07  
** **9:50 AM  
** **William Harvey Hospital, Ashford**

"No joy." Ros said, dropping in to the car seat next to Jo. "Found Hatch and Hodgeson, both of them remembered Zaf but both of them said they hadn't told anyone where he went."

"So that leaves us Mullin?" Jo asked. Ros nodded. "What do we do if she says she didn't leak?"

"Depends on whether we believe her."

"Do you believe the other two?"

"Yes. Anyway, why would they lie to an MI5 officer?"

"You showed them real ID?"

"Well, I am asking them if they broke patient confidentiality, and terrorist doctors are fairly rare. They tend to be rule followers."

"So Mullin?"

"Mullin."

Jo turned the key in the ignition.

Ros turned to look out of the passenger window. She'd sent an angry message to her YALTA handler on Saturday night, saying that their intelligence had been wrong, that Zaf was alive. She'd been summoned to a meet, given them what she knew and received nothing in exchange. They didn't know if it was the CIA, directly or indirectly. Though, according to Zaf, all the men had had American accents, which pushed Ros back towards suspecting the CIA. Adam's view that the means of torture were wrong for the CIA, didn't do much to sway Ros. She wouldn't have been surprised to discover that the CIA had one interrogation protocol for anyone they might ever release and another for anyone they intended to kill, so was rarely seen and little known. The problem with that theory was that they'd tried to get Zaf across an international border alive. That was risky, very risky. And if they'd always intended to kill Zaf, why move him? He'd given them everything they'd wanted, why keep him alive? Why not just suffocate him or cut his neck, and throw the body in a pig pen, or burn it or bury it or whatever. It was far easier to dispose of a body than to smuggle a live man out of the country. They must have been trying to sell him, but that was an odd move for the CIA. Maybe Adam would win out, they were unlikely to find out much down here.


	22. The Grid 9:50 AM

**29/10/07  
** **9:50 AM  
** **The Grid**

"And how much of it did he drink?" Connie asked.

"Near enough all of it." Adam replied. "Once I'd taken a mouthful to prove it wasn't dangerous."

Connie huffed. "It's a nice trick, give them a drink that makes them lose so much water it actually makes them thirstier. What was it exactly?"

"Lucozade, Frusemide and… however you say that. Spiral-o-something."

"So poisoned chalice, twenty minutes of siren and ten minutes of stress position. I think he's ready for another round, don't you?"

Adam nodded. "You taking this one?"

"On my own, if I may."

"'Course. I'll be watching."

"Well, let's see if I can teach you anything." Connie pulled the last few things out of her pockets and set them on the tray, then strode through the first door. She turned the siren off and unlocked the second door, then walked in to the cell.

"Right." She said. "That's enough of that racket for now. Guard, he may relax." The prisoner dropped like a stone on to his front. The guard took his ear protection off and started towards the prisoner. "I said he may relax." Connie repeated. She crouched part way forward and set one hand on the floor, then folded her legs, grumbling like a woman with far worse arthritis than she had.

"Now," She said, pulling her legs in by the ankles so she sat cross-legged in front of the prisoner. "You and I are going to have a little talk about pragmatism." The man completely ignored her. She sighed. "How much longer do you want this to go on for, really?" Still no response. "I assure you, you'll tire of it long before John does. Now you've been identified as a torturer and arrested in possession of an interesting collection of schedule 2 and 3 drugs without a medical or veterinary licence, there aren't many good options open to you at this stage. Also, you're in the hands of the British Secret Service, or more accurately, you're in the hands of John Baxter." The man flicked his eyes up at her. "Yes, that's his name, not that it'll do you any good. John Baxter believes, and quite frankly anybody with any sense agrees with him, that you were not working alone. I imagine you know how this works, the first one to sing gets off Scott free. Well, near enough. You're going to be prosecuted for the drugs whatever you do, but if you sing well enough we might let the kidnap and torture slide." The man said nothing. Connie sighed. "Ah, but of course you won't talk. You're terribly loyal to your co-conspirators. Do you know where they are? What do you imagine they're doing, right now to rescue you?" Still nothing. "The thing is, we've talked to the CIA, we showed them your picture, said 'hullo, this man was caught trying to smuggle drugs and a naked, tortured man out of the UK, do you know him?' They said 'No, Ma'am, definitely not. Do whatever you want to him, he's not ours.'" What might have been a swiftly disguised smirk crossed the man's face. Connie sighed again. "Now, returning to the subject of John Baxter. He has it within him to be a very violent man." The prisoner coughed. "But he's not a sadist. Once he has what he needs, he will stop. But until he has what he needs, he won't. Not for as much as half an hour. People underestimate John Baxter at the beginning because he starts very gently, but believe me, he can and will make it worse until he gets what he wants." Connie let the silence hang for a moment. "I'm going to leave now, there's only so much sitting on a cold floor I'm prepared to do. As soon as I leave the room, the siren is going to turn back on and you are going to go back to the stress position. Unless of course, you want to answer me first." He looked up at her. "What is your real name, who hired you and where are the rest of your group?"

There was a long silence. The prisoner broke it. "Go to hell."

"Of course, I can't make you talk." Connie replied and got up. Her hips were stiff now. "That's John Baxter's job. Guard." She gestured to the prisoner. The guard kicked him back in to the stress position and covered his own ears.

Adam was waiting for her.

"John Baxter?" He asked.

"I was improvising. I don't think he's CIA though. He wasn't as stone faced as I'd expect him to be if he were, and he didn't really react when I told him the CIA had hung him out to dry."

"Should I call you Cassandra if Harry's meeting proves that true?"

"As you like. Only make sure you do make it worse for him in twenty minutes or so."

* * *

 **Frusemide:** A drug which causes the kidneys to not retain water, so can relieve heart failure, but can cause dehydration.

 **Spiral-o-something:** Adam means Spiranolactone, a very similar drug.


	23. Ashford 10:15 AM

**29/10/07  
** **10:15 AM  
** **Ashford**

"This isn't a public place," Ros said as Jo put the handbrake on outside Laura Mullin's address. Jo looked at her. "So this is a much higher risk for a snatch than the hospital was, so we go together." Jo nodded. "You take point on this one, you can use your real ID, but if she's willing to talk anyway, don't."

"You sure?"

"About what?"

"Me taking point."

"I did the first two and this isn't an interrogation. It isn't hard. It's just asking what she's told to who, if anyone."

Jo nodded. "Okay." She got out of the car. Ros followed a pace behind her. They climbed the four steps up to the door and Jo rang the bell. They waited maybe a minute before the door was opened, on a chain, by a young woman with mouse brown hair, maybe three inches shorter than Jo.

"Hello?"

"Doctor Mullin?"

"Yes, who's asking?"

"May we come in?"

"Who is we?"

Out of the corner of her eye, Jo saw Ros nod. "MI5."

"What is it this time?" She asked, taking the door off the chain.

"This time?" Jo asked, stepping over the threshold.

"Well, it was the CIA on Saturday. I'm starting to feel like nothing can surprise me."

"Go on?" Jo prompted.

"They wanted to talk about someone who'd been brought in that morning."

On the same day as Zaf then. "Who?" Jo asked.

Doctor Mullin hesitated. "I don't remember what they said his name was, they said he was masterminding a massive school bombing plot in the USA."

Jo frowned. "We might know who you're talking about, what else can you remember about him?"

"Ah… Can I see some ID?" Doctor Mullin asked. Jo took hers out, Ros did the same. The Doctor glanced over them, then carried on. "He was middle eastern looking, probably would have stood a bit under six feet tall, early thirties" That would fit with Zaf.

"Can you tell us what sort of injuries he came in with?" Ros asked.

"Ah… he came in drugged out, opioid and ketamine mix, couldn't stand when we revived him, fingernails pulled out, just covered in bruises and burns-"

That sounded more like Zaf. Ros pulled a photo out of her pocket. "This man?" Doctor Mullin took the photo and studied it. It was a year-old photo, an ID shot of Zaf staring straight at the camera. Jo could imagine that he hadn't looked much like that when Mullin had seen him.

"I… I think so, yes."

"Then I'm sorry to tell you, Doctor," Ros started, "you've been misinformed."

"This man is not a terrorist." Jo continued. "In fact, he's very valuable to MI5 in neutralising terrorist threats."

"Did the man claiming to be CIA ever show you any sort of ID?" Ros asked.

"No, he… he said they don't carry ID because it can get them killed."

"Not while talking to a doctor." Ros said coldly. "When did this happen?"

"Saturday, about nine PM."

"Since then, there's been an attempt on the life of the man he asked you about." Doctor Mullin's face fell.

"I… I'm so, so sorry. I honestly thought the man was a CIA agent. I honestly thought he needed to know."

"I believe you." Ros said calmly "But we now need to find this CIA agent. What can you tell us about him?"

"He ah… he was probably 5 foot 6, Caucasian, probably mid thirties, dark hair."

"Was he any of these men?" Jo asked, taking out three photographs and setting them on the coffee table. One of them was a CCTV frame Truro had managed to get of the man who'd tried to kill Zaf and knifed Adam, the other two were just stock photos. One of them, according to Malcolm, had been Adam's predecessor.

"Him." Doctor Mullin said, after a moment, tapping the photo from Truro.


	24. The Truro Centre 11:20 AM

**29/10/07  
** **11:20 AM  
** **The Truro Centre**

Zaf was lying very still. It hurt to move, even with the drugs. There didn't seem to be an inch of flesh on him that wasn't damaged in some way. He hadn't yet found a way to lie that didn't hurt something. When one area clamoured more loudly than anywhere else, he shifted his weight off it, then developed muscle pains from doing that. And moving was difficult. He couldn't put any weight on his hands or feet without crying out like he had when they'd broken his bones in the first place. They came in to turn him over every few hours, so new bits of him started hurting. His head felt like it was full of cotton wool, he was simultaneously detached from his pain and aware of it, almost to the exclusion of all else. And he felt sick. Not the kind of sick you felt from eating something bad, the kind where you could feel you were ready to throw it back up again and be rid of it, this was slower, more insidious. Somehow it didn't feel as though throwing up would help at all. And he was cold, cold that seemed to come from deep inside him, but he was still sweating. That suggested to Zaf that he was feverish.

He could still hear their voices in the back of his head. He tried not to let his mind go back there, but he could no more shut them up now than he could have done at the time.

"Do you know what this is, Zaffar? Do you know what it's for?"

"They think you're dead. No one is coming for you."

"You can lie there and whine all you like, you dirty little arab bitch. Sooner or later, you are going to give me everything I want."

"Oh listen to him! Listen! He's crying for his Mommy!"

A doctor had been in earlier to talk to Zaf about his hands and feet. He'd been told before then that he'd need a lot of surgery to ever hope to be able to use them normally. The doctor had explained what he was going to do, in terms Zaf didn't understand. He didn't think he'd have understood them on a good day before. He certainly couldn't now. Then he'd asked for Zaf's consent. That seemed pointless to Zaf. He didn't understand what the doctor was going to do, he assumed the man knew what he was talking about, he couldn't hold a pen to sign… None of it made sense to Zaf.

"Zaffar?" Female voice. Then footsteps. "Zaffar?" That was the northern nurse, Tia. The footsteps stopped. He opened his eyes. She was crouched right in front of him, at his eye level. "Are you in pain?" He hesitated. She tilted her head at him, as if to say she knew the answer. He nodded slightly. "Do you do the ten-point scale?" He nodded again. "And?"

"Seven?" He said.

"Where is it? Bones? Bruising? Mouth?"

"Hands are worst."

She reached for his nearest hand, swollen and bandaged. He tensed.

"You're afraid of me even touching it, aren't you?" He didn't answer her. She sighed. "Zaffar, you're allowed to be in pain. There's no expectation to tough it out here. You've got about thirty broken bones. That is going to be painful. I've got permission to put you back on the ketamine if you want me to. It's just about the best thing for bone pain, but it will knock you out."

"That's fine." Being drugged out was safer than sleeping. He didn't dream when he was drugged, or if he did, he didn't remember.

"Do you feel up to eating something first?" He shook his head. "Not even some soup or something?"

"It's not just my mouth."

"You feeling sick too?" He nodded. "Unfortunately that's the methadone, one of the painkillers, but have you had maropitant?" She glanced across at a sheet of paper. "No, well I'll try and get you some of that, that should take the edge off the nausea."

She got up and left again.

* * *

 **Ten-point scale:** A very subjective way of measuring a person's pain. Zero is no pain, ten is the worst pain the patient can imagine.

 **Ketamine:** Can be used as a painkiller if managed very carefully, but can also cause very vivid hallucinations and coma.

 **Maropitant:** A drug that makes the brain poorly able to register a need (or in this case perceived need) to vomit. Not actually widely used in people, but it would probably help Zaf quite a bit.

 **Note: The fourth thing Zaf remembers his captors saying is based on a line in the last episode of season six, but it is entirely possible that the character who spoke that line was lying.**


	25. Ashford 11:20 AM

**29/10/07  
** **11:20 AM  
** **Ashford**

"Right, drive." Ros said to Jo.

"Thames House?"

"Yep." Ros pulled out her phone as Jo started the engine. She pressed two on speed dial and waited.

"Harry Pearce."

"Harry, we found the leak. It was one of the doctors, she talked to a man claiming to be a CIA agent, that same man went to Truro. I don't think she's in league with them, I think she just didn't question why a CIA agent would be running ops in the UK carrying no ID."

"Thank you Ros. Return to base."


	26. The Grid 2:30 PM

**29/10/07  
** **2:30 PM  
** **The Grid**

Adam turned the siren off and walked back in. The guard looked questioningly at him, Adam nodded. The guard took off his ear guards. The prisoner was standing in the middle of the room, swaying slightly. His eyes locked on the water bottle in Adam's right hand.

"You want this," Adam said, holding it up to the light, "don't you?" The man didn't answer, but the sudden grip of his jaw was clear enough. Adam smiled. "You know what I want for it." The man stood stock still. Adam stepped closer. "Who hired you to torture the officer?" He held the bottle out in front of him, just out of the man's reach. The man grabbed for it. Adam snatched it back. "You drink when I say you can drink. Who hired you?"

"Only the boss knows."

"Who's 'the boss' then?"

"We don't know each others real names."

"Don't give me that." Adam stepped closer. "You're a mercenary pack. You live together, travel together, you can't have friends outside the pack. You can't possibly conceal your names from each other." Silence.

Adam took the lid off the bottle and raised it to his mouth as though to drink. The man snatched it. Adam resisted the urge to step back as the man took a gulp, then coughed half of it back up again, spraying Adam in the face with strong saltwater. His breath stank. Adam kept himself stone faced. "I said you drink when I say you can drink." He said calmly, stepping back and drawing another bottle from his pocket. "This is plain water. What if I said… twenty mils of water for every genuine name, fifty for a location, fifty for the client." The man had turned paler, but didn't reply. "Have it your own way." Adam walked out.


	27. Trafalgar Square 3:00 PM

**29/10/07  
** **3:00 PM  
** **Trafalgar Square**

"Hello Bob." Harry said, stepping out from behind the stone plinth. Bob turned sharply.

"Harry. Show me your hands."

Harry did, nice and low, no gloves. "Come on Bob, if I'd been going to try to drug you again I wouldn't have suggested a meet in Trafalgar Square at half term." As though to prove his point, two small children chased each other between them, then started trying to scramble up to the lions.

"So what do you want?"

"Two men have become of interest to the service in the past two days, I want to know if they're yours."

"Why?"

"Suffice to say they've been sniffing around a little too close to sensitive information. If we knew they were CIA we might just growl at them and send them on their way. If they're not, we will have to take stronger action."

"So who are they?"  
"They gave their names as Finn Goldman and Finn something-illegible beginning with K respectively. Both in their thirties, both white with dark hair. Both sound American, but we both know that's no certainty."

"Photos?"

"In my pocket. May I?"

"Go on."

Harry drew out the photo of the man who was still at large first.

"That is a really bad photo."

"He was a little camera shy."

"This could be anyone Harry. You'd need a computer to tell."

"You're welcome to take this photo and run it by your analysts, naturally we have copies."

"Right. The second?" Harry drew out the photo of the man Adam was questioning. Bob looked at it for a long moment. "Don't know him. I mean, I don't know every CIA agent, but if he's CIA and running ops here without telling me he'd better have a damn good reason."

"I could say the same myself."

Bob looked up at him. "Was that a threat?"

"It's a statement of fact, Bob. My job is to protect British interests. As I'm sure you understand, I can't have unknown entities nosing around without my knowledge. If they are not yours, we will have to intervene."

"I don't think they are, but I'll take the photos to the analysts and check."

"Please do include any outsiders hired in."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Only that we both know that those doing the CIA's bidding aren't always CIA. You taught that to one of my officers very sharply recently."

"Oh come on Harry, we didn't authorise that. They were supposed to contain him, not kill him."

"Frankly, where a bioweapon like that is concerned, it amounts to the same." Harry didn't feel the need to correct Bob. "Goodbye Bob. You have three hours before we move."


	28. The Grid 4:10 PM

**29/10/07  
** **4:10 PM  
** **The Grid**

Adam circled the prisoner slowly. He was close. He could feel it. The man was kneeling on the ground, he hadn't been able to stand any more. His whole body was rigid. He was holding himself in with all his might, but Adam could already see the cracks. He was breathing too fast, and not quite steadily, as though he was trying not to cry. If Adam's next move was right, it was all over. They might still catch the bastards. It hadn't been 72 hours yet.

Connie was standing in the corner, watching him, arms folded, lips pursed.

"Where were you holding him?" Adam asked softly, stopping directly behind the man. There was no reply, but the man tensed visibly, bracing himself. Carefully now.

Adam pounced on the man, grimacing and hissing in pain, suddenly throwing the man forwards on to his stomach. The man screamed. Pain or shock, Adam didn't care.

"Street End Lane!"

Adam took his weight off the man, forbidding himself to so much as grunt at the pain in his side. He left one hand at the back of the man's neck, not that it would do much to keep him down, it just felt scary.

"Keep talking." Adam almost whispered.

"It's off Street End Lane." He took a couple of wheezing gasps of breath. "Off the A265 by Heathfield." He took another shuddering breath. "East Sussex."

"Where on the road?" Adam asked.

"Two clicks north of it. I swear that's the truth."

Adam nodded and took his hand off the man's neck. "Elsie, will you bring him fifty mils of water, and ask Giles to check that it sounds feasible." Connie walked out. "You see, now I say you can drink. This will just be water, you have my word."

Connie came back in with a plastic cup. Adam had though fifty mils was a bit more than that. Oh well. She handed the cup to him. He set it down in front of the prisoner, with his left hand so he didn't have to lift his right arm. The prisoner pushed himself up on his elbows and looked at the cup. Adam said nothing. He'd take it. The man was desperately thirsty.

Once he had drained it, Adam spoke again.

"You see? No salt, no peroxide. It's really very simple. That much water won't get you very far. Next it's names: the others in the cell and the person who paid you."


	29. Street End Lane 6:05 PM

**29/10/07  
** **6:05 PM  
** **Street End Lane**

Adam loaded his pistol and looked up at the Special Branch chief.

"Right, you spooks keep to the back until we know the area is under control. Thermal imaging is drawing a blank, but in an old farmhouse the walls could be too thick for us to see through." Adam nodded in assent. He and Ros were sitting in the back of one of the Special Branch vans they'd brought down to raid the address he'd got from the driver. They might well be too late, Zaf must have been taken from here sixty hours ago or more, but they might have made a mistake. They might have left something behind that they could use to find them. "Okay, strike in three, two, one." All eight spec ops men burst out of the van and started to run down the farm track, Adam and Ros set off in their wake, pistols pointed at the ground.

"You sure you should even be doing this?" Ros asked.

"I'm fine." Adam said. The slash in his side was nowhere near enough to keep him off work, not when they were already a man down. It hurt, but it wasn't prohibitively painful.

The house came in to view, it looked for all the world like any other abandoned outbuilding; one floor, windows boarded up, door bolted and covered in peeling green paint. The soldiers charged at the door, obviously expecting to break it down. Adam and Ros pressed themselves in to the hedgerows. Adam felt bramble thorns pull at his clothes. The lead soldier fell back from the door with a curse, he'd more or less bounced off. It was stronger than the rotting wood it looked like. The second soldier came in with a lock drill and tried again. There was obviously something very solid behind it. It took nearly another minute of drilling and shoving before the door fell in. The soldiers filed in, two circled round, Adam and Ros stayed still.

They waited. For what felt like well over ten minutes, they waited. Eventually a soldier reappeared at the door and called

"All clear, they got out well ahead of us."

Adam and Ros started down the hill towards the door, Adam flicked the safety back on on his pistol. It was dark in the house, Adam pulled a torch from his pocket and shone it around the door. The door itself was reinforced with metal bars. Adam kept walking. To the left of the front door were two large rooms. The first contained bunk beds, three of them. No mattresses, just frames. Half a page of what might have been a porn magazine was trapped under the leg of one of the beds. An electric cable ran from the doorway up to a light socket in the middle of the ceiling. The next room was a kitchen. Two discarded gas bottles lay in a corner, along with various bits of plastic foodwrap. Whatever they'd cooked on was gone.

"Nothing very incriminating, is there?" Ros said. Adam didn't reply. They carried on.

The room immediately to the right of the door wasn't wood. It wasn't even wood reinforced with bars. It was solid steel, with a small, barred window near the top that could be closed from the outside. Like a prison door. Adam stepped in. This room was bare. There was a strong smell of human waste in here, a few bits of wet and bloody straw lay in the corners, as though someone had tried to sweep up, but not done a very good job of it.

"Do you think we'll get DNA from the blood?" Adam asked

Ros shrugged. "We might do."

"And dust this door for prints." Adam ordered one of the soldiers. "And anything made of glass or plastic, they hold prints well."

He backed out of the cell and made for the next room. This one was furnished. A desk stood more or less in the middle of the room, behind it was a row of shelves and a rack. In front of the table was empty space. Apart from four six-inch poles sticking up out of the concrete this room was lined with. In the tops of the poles were holes. Adam crept closer, as though the poles might rise up and bite him. There was blood on the floor here, quite a lot of it. Then he saw a leather strap lying beside one of the poles and understood. He could see it now. The poles were set a distance apart so that a grown man, Zaf, could be stretched out between and held with those straps, by wrists and ankles. Unable to move, unable to protect himself at all, only able to see them coming and dread it. Adam glanced across at Ros, she'd obviously reached the same conclusion.

"They knew we'd come." Ros said. Adam nodded mutely and turned to the desk. He tried the drawers in turn, they weren't locked. The first and second were empty, a single CD lay in a case in the third.

"Ros."

She came and looked over his shoulder. "Given that everything else has been stripped, I expect they left that for us on purpose."

"There still might be something on it we can use."

* * *

 **For anyone who didn't hear me before, new chapters are triggered by reviews. Any review, any chapter, any reviewer.**


	30. The Grid 8:45 AM

**30/10/07  
** **8:45 AM  
** **The Grid**

It was Tuesday morning. They'd all had a long day yesterday, so Harry had pushed briefing back by fifteen minutes, for which Adam was grateful. Harry, as usual, didn't waste time with niceties; he sat down in his seat and immediately asked

"Ros, Adam, how confident are you that the location you were given was used by the mercenaries?"

"Reasonably." Ros said. "It had been stripped out effectively, we were too late, but the set up, or what was left of it, was strongly suggestive of detention and torture."

"Well the CD you found is more than suggestive." Malcolm said grimly. Everyone looked at him. "I put it on a firewalled, isolated laptop and had a look. It's not filled to a tenth of its capacity. It's a series of three to five second clips of different people struggling and screaming, interspersed with the words 'You will never find us' as white text on a black background. It's not enjoyable viewing. The subjects' faces are obscured in the video and voice recognition struggles immensely with screams. The video's format has been changed, so I can't edit it either, and it was done on just about the most popular video editing software in the world. There's nothing usable there." Adam sighed.

"All we had from the leak in the hospital," Jo started, "was that the man who asked her where Zaf was was the same man who turned up in Truro next day and attacked Adam, she picked him out of three."

"So it gives us nothing new." Harry surmised. "And neither did the CIA. They're denying all knowledge of Adam's assailant and the man we have here in cells. If they are or ever were CIA, they're not interested in protecting them."

"Those the CIA hired in the first place were probably five of the six bodies we found burning in an alley." Ros said. "We have good reason to suspect that Zaf was taken from there by a second group, the group we're now trying to catch."

"Malcolm," Harry said, "anything new about the two known members?"

"Well I managed to persuade the police to hand our prisoner's possessions over, there might be things in his wallet that can help me find out about him."

"Chase it up." Harry ordered. "What else do we have?"

"We still have our man downstairs." Connie said. "We have… five days before we have to hand him back to the police to be charged, or let him go."

"I promised the police they could have him back." Jo said. "If that means anything."

"Come on, we're not letting him go, whatever he gives us." Adam said.

"More than anything else," Connie said, "this looks like one group of remarkably well-informed mercenaries wiping out another group of deniable, dispensable mercenaries for possession of a Spook."

"Of course," Ros said calmly, "when Zaf was taken, he was infected with a weaponised virus. That's probably at least as valuable as anything Zaf could tell them if they were able to isolate and store it." Adam dropped his head on to his hands. He did not want to deal with that again.

"Malcolm, is that a realistic risk?" Harry asked.

"Ah… off the top of my head, it's an enveloped virus so survives poorly outside a living host, they'd need to take it directly from Zaf's tissues, I'm not sure how easy that would be."

"Watch for anything like it appearing for sale."

"But we know Zaf was exposed." Jo said. "So since he's still alive he must have had the vaccine. They must have got it from somewhere."

"And if the Russians are the only source…" Harry said.

"I'm not sure we can just ask them Harry." Connie said. "Given what we did to get the vaccine from them, I doubt they're best pleased with us at the moment." There was a long silence.

"I'm going to sanction this line of inquiry for another twenty-four hours." Harry said. "Unless we find anything significant before then, I am going to order you all to return to normal work."

"Harry, they tortured-" Adam started.

"You can't be- " Jo was also speaking.

Harry held up a hand to silence them. "I appreciate why you want to pursue this, but our priority is to protect the British public, not our own officers. The longer the interval, the less likely we are to catch the rest of the cell. There are rumblings in North Africa which we will only be able to ignore for so long."

* * *

 **Note: The virus shows definite traits of an enveloped virus (doesn't seem to contaminate the environment in any meaningful sense, they didn't have to bleach the streets where infected people had walked) and of a non-enveloped virus (sudden, severe symptoms). However, it should be noted that these are both general rules (Ebola is an enveloped virus which causes very severe symptoms), but no virus I am aware of (and I looked) has so predictable an incubation period. Norovirus, the virus with the shortest mean incubation period I can find, has an average incubation period of 33 hours, plus or minus fifteen. Also, the 'theraputic vaccine' as used in the episode, is sheer nonsense. A vaccine is by definition preventative, not therapeutic. If the writers were thinking of the post-exposure Rabies vaccine, this relies on treatment beginning before the onset of symptoms, so Adam could not have survived. If they were thinking of an antitoxin, such as that used to treat tetanus, they are implying that the 'virus' is actually a bacterium, which would make better sense in many ways. As such, applying real science to this 'weaponised virus' is challenging.**


	31. The Truro Centre 3:10 PM

**31/10/07  
** **3:10 PM  
** **The Truro Centre**

There was something at the back of his throat. He gagged. The thing pulled at his throat from the inside and was gone.

"Zaffar? Zaffar, can you hear me?" A shadow to his right. He opened his eyes slightly. He saw a face and recoiled, shouting. He knew that face. That face had ordered them to break his hands, his feet, then squeeze and twist the broken bones. It had told the man with the knife- "Hey, hey, hey, it's alright." Hands grabbed his upper arms, holding him down. He felt sick with dread. "You're safe, it's OK, you're out surgery, it's normal to be a bit disorientated for a moment." The voice didn't match the face. Something was beeping nearby. He started to make sense of the voice. He wasn't in enemy hands, he wasn't under torture, it was over. He was in a hospital bed in Truro. His feet hurt, his groin hurt, his right hand hurt. But it all felt… distracted, distant. He could ignore it in a way he wasn't always able to. His face felt like it was full of cotton wool, puffed and unresponsive. He swallowed. Something tasted unpleasant. "Zaffar?" He blinked. It was bright. The figure to his right came in to focus. A man, Doctor Seymore, the anaesthetist. Not the torturer. So he was in recovery after surgery, again. "Are you with me now?" He nodded once. "That's good. You're alright. Not the best recovery in the world, but you're through it now. How are you feeling?"

"Stoned." Everything felt disconnected, he knew he should have been in more pain than he was, so he must be drugged out of his head. His voice was slurred, his mouth wasn't moving properly. His heart was starting to settle down again.

"Well that suggests I'm doing my job fairly well. Pain score?"

"Three?" Nothing actually hurt that much, just everything felt… odd. And where was his left hand? Crap, they hadn't taken it, had they? He twisted to look, he could feel his elbow bend when he told it to, but – no, his hand was there, all of it. There were lines of stitches all over it, but it was definitely there, he could see it. He just couldn't feel it.

"It's only a RUMM block Zaffar."

"What?"

"I numbed your forearm. If you make the whole area senseless before the surgeons start doing the painful thing, the pain never gets as bad as it otherwise would. The ketamine I'm using on you during the surgeries will also be helping with that. Your arm will start waking up in a couple of hours."

"What time is it?"

"Half past three. They've sorted your left hand and done most of what they need to in your mouth. It's only your feet left now, they'll do those tomorrow, then that's all the surgeries done. The pain should definitely improve from there." Zaf nodded. His neck itched. He raised his right hand to scratch at it, the one he could feel, the one they'd operated on yesterday, and remembered why. They'd put a feeding tube in yesterday. He'd not been able to face eating because of his mouth and how sick he felt, or feed himself anyway because he couldn't use his hands. So they'd put a tube in his neck and they were syringing stuff down it at regular intervals.

It was humiliating. It was humiliating in an entirely different way to being stripped naked and left in a bare cell with a pile of straw in the corner. He couldn't even get up and get himself to the toilet. He peed sitting like a little boy because his feet were too painful to stand on. He was completely physically dependant. And they were so matter-of-fact about it, it was obviously completely normal for them. For him it wasn't. Two weeks ago, he'd been a functional, independent adult, he'd been able to run a mile in six minutes, he'd gone to work, he'd looked after himself.

"About earlier." He said. The doctor looked up at him. "I'm sorry."

"It's alright. You're far from the first to wake up not knowing where you are; one man very nearly punched me in the face. It's at least as much my fault for not preventing you feeling that as it is yours for jumping."

* * *

 **RUMM block:** A series of injections of local anaesthetic in to the arm, which, if done correctly, will render everything below the elbow numb.


	32. The Truro Centre 9:10 AM

**3/11/07  
** **9:10 AM  
** **The Truro Centre**

Adam tapped twice on the door of the hospital room.

"Zaf?"

"Adam." He sounded much more like himself than he had done the last time Adam had seen him. It was early on Saturday morning, a full week since Ros had called him to say Zaf had been found. Adam stepped in to the room and let the door shut behind him. Zaf looked very different to how he had looked a week ago. The bruises on his face were paling to green and yellow, some were already brown. There was a tube of some sort protruding from the side of his neck. He had a catheter in one arm, but no drip now. His hands had been bandaged before, now they were heavily stitched, swollen, had fresher bruises than his face, but Adam could see skin, even if there were only stubs of fingernails, just starting to grow back. And Zaf looked fully awake. The way he was holding his face looked much more normal.

"Hey, how are you doing?"

Zaf made a strange face. "Well, I can honestly say better." He made an effort to push himself in to more of a sitting position. Adam pulled his pillows up behind him. "Thanks."

"No worries. You look better."

"I guess that's not saying much."

Adam looked around. "There are still no bloody chairs in this place. Ten years ago the staff were always complaining that there were never any chairs. Nothing changes." Something flickered across Zaf's face. He'd realised why Adam had been here ten years ago. Adam hadn't meant to bring that up. Zaf looked down and shifted his legs across the bed a bit.

"Here. I don't know where you can find a chair, so…"

"Thanks." Adam perched on the end of the bed.

"What brings you all the way down here again? Someone trying to blow up Land's End?"

"It's Saturday. I'm my own man unless someone actually does try to blow something up."

"Is it? I've lost track. Someone could have blown up Parliament and gassed out Buckingham Palace and I don't think I'd know a thing about it."

"Well thankfully we've had a fairly quiet week past Monday and nothing's blown up." Zaf looked at him, inviting him to go on. "Unfortunately Harry ordered us off the trail of the mercs who had you on Wednesday morning. We weren't getting far enough fast enough." Zaf didn't let himself react. "They had too big a start on us, they must have known they were open by noon on Saturday, we didn't have the resources to start doing much before Monday morning. Harry says it's not our priority and sent us off looking through some whisperings in North Africa."

"Is Michael still operational?"

"What, your Waterfall asset? Yeah. Jo took him over."

Zaf sighed. "He's quite stable, he should be okay with a change of handler."

"Yeah, we think he is."

Zaf drew a breath and immediately started coughing. He lifted an arm to cover his mouth.

"You alright?" Adam asked, as the coughing fit subsided.

Zaf nodded. "'S not the bioweapon."

"If it were you'd be dead."

Zaf looked across at him. "Come to that, how the hell did you survive it?"

"Russians had a cure." Adam said. "We ah… persuaded them to give it up. Jo did really well that day. I had to leave her for dead, she got herself out of it. She's been at this, what? Eighteen months? There are people twice as experienced couldn't have done that." Zaf sort of smiled. "Anyway, I thought it might… I thought you might want to know what happened with the guy you ID'd last time I was here, the driver." Zaf looked intently at him. "He broke. He broke in seven and a half hours, without a mark on his body. I only laid a hand on him twice, and one of those times he grabbed me first."

A look of grim satisfaction settled on Zaf's face. "Good." He said coldly.

"I don't think I've ever broken anyone that fast before. He gave us an address, his name, the name of the company, the names of most of the rest of them…"

"You think his intel's good?"

"Not too sure about the names, but for the rest of it I believe him. The real problem I had was who they were hired by. I don't think he knew."

"Do you think you'll get it from him?"

Adam shook his head. "He's gone. Harry ordered us to drop it, he's been handed back to the police, and Harry's forbidden us to pursue the inquiry any further. So I am definitely not going to ask you questions to confirm that the location he gave us was right."

Adam saw Zaf smile. "Of course you're not."

"And I'm definitely not going to ask you where you were kept between bouts."

"A cell. Rough stone walls, metal door, barred window. Probably two metres by four."

"And I'm not allowed to ask you which way you turned out of that cell to get to where you were interrogated."

"Right. Probably two metres between the doors." That fitted with the place the driver had given them.

"Thanks."

"No problem. Is there anything else you're not going to ask me?"

Adam smiled. "In terms of figuring out who hired them, it would be really helpful to know what they were asking, to compare it to what the Driver told us."

Zaf sighed and looked away. "A lot."

"Was there a pattern to it? Anything they were particularly interested in?"

Zaf shook his head. "I'd tell you if I knew, Adam, but… There was nothing. None of it ever made sense, there didn't seem to be a main aim, it felt like they were asking anything they thought I could possibly know."

Adam sighed. "Okay. That's it. Next thing." Zaf visibly relaxed. "This has probably occurred to you, but your mother has made multiple calls to various confused government departments trying to find out where you are. Sooner or later, you are going to have to see her, and sooner is probably better."

Zaf nodded. "That's okay."

"And obviously we can't tell her what really happened."

"What's she been told?"

"Ros went and told her that you'd been captured with a British diplomatic unit in Syria and interrogated. Probably the best line to go down is mistaken identity; they thought you were with a different group, they didn't believe you when you told them who you were…" Adam tailed off.

Zaf nodded. "Has anyone told her how I got out?"

"Ros used the term 'retrieved'. Say the British Army sent men to find you. And we need a convincing excuse for why she hasn't been allowed to see you yet."

"I'll take the flack for that. I can just say I didn't want her to see me like that."

"Okay. I'm going to push you a bit, see how you hold. Just to check you're with it enough to have civilian visitors."

"Okay." Zaf said. He didn't look particularly bothered by the idea. Adam stood up.

"Name."

"Zaffar Younis."

"Job."

"I work for the British Civil Service as an interdepartmental interpreter." That sounded fine to Adam. Zaf had been telling his family that for ten years.

"Where were you captured?"

"On the road between Damascus and Al Tawani. I was with a British Diplomatic unit, serving as an Arabic-English translator."

"Who captured you?"

"I don't know."

"What do you mean you don't know? How long were you with them?"

"About ten days."

"Ten days and you don't know who they were?"

"They never identified themselves."

"Why did they take you?"

"I don't know. My guess would be they're anti-Westerners who didn't like the fact I was traveling with white men who only spoke English."

"What did they want?"

"I don't know. I don't think they did either. I think they thought, since most of the group was white, we must have been spies or saboteurs, they wouldn't believe anything else we told them."

"Why would they bother with you? You're only an interpreter."

"I don't know. I don't think they believed me."

"I'm hearing a lot of 'I don't know' in this, you're playing ignorance." The door opened behind Adam, he ignored it and kept staring Zaf down. Zaf glanced at the door, then met his eye again. "What are you holding back?"

"Who are you and what are you doing in here?" A nurse had walked in to the room, and was looking at Adam as though she'd found him punching a kitten.

"Emily, this is Adam." Zaf said. "As for what he's doing here… I don't think I can tell you."

"Trying to prevent a breach of the Official Secrets Act." Adam supplied.

"That's not what it looked like." Emily said coldly.

"He's doing his job Emily." Zaf said. Emily gave a soft huff and turned away to one of the cupboards in the room. Zaf looked back at Adam. "I'm not withholding information for the sake of it. Torturers don't tend to want to tell their captives very much." Adam put himself back in interrogation mode.

"It wasn't even Syria, was it? Assad favours beating, trauma is to the torso. That's not what I'm seeing on you."

"I didn't say it was Assad."

"No, you didn't _say_ anything. You're just talking at me."

"I can stop this." Emily said, turning back to face them. "I have a responsibility to stop this, this man has seen enough of rough questioning recently. I'm calling security."

"He's doing his job." Zaf repeated firmly. "If he doesn't do this, I can't see my family. And as 'rough questioning' goes, this doesn't figure." Emily's mouth had turned in to a thin line. She folded her arms and backed in to the corner of the room. Zaf looked back at Adam. "I've told you what I know. There's not much to it because I don't know much. Go and talk to the spec ops troops who got us out of there, they've been questioning the ones that took us hostage. They'll know much more than me by now."

"What the hell were spec ops troops doing in Syria in the first place?"

"They got annoyed with Assad not finding us quickly enough, so they came in."

"What?" Adam stepped closer and stood over Zaf. "Assad just gave them permission to just waltz in?"

"I don't know. I doubt Assad knew beforehand, it was probably a surgical strike."

"This entire thing just sounds made up. What are you hiding?"

"I've told you what I know." Zaf said calmly. "Unless you want to go in to specific details of what they asked and how they hurt us, there's nothing more I can tell you."

Adam relaxed. "Okay, well done. You'll do." Zaf relaxed too.

"You do that for real, don't you?" Emily said.

Adam turned and looked at her. She was looking at him with absolute disgust. "For the record, I devise and deliver R2I courses for British Security and Military Personnel. That necessitates knowing how interrogation usually works." None of that was untrue. Adam didn't feel the need to mention that he also taught interrogation, or how he'd spent most of Monday. He stepped away from Zaf's bed. The nurse approached and faffed around Zaf for a couple of minutes, wrote a few things down and left again. Adam went back to Zaf's bedside.

"I'll call in when I leave here and tell Harry you're fit to see your family, and get a car arranged for your mother."

"Thanks."

"How are you filling your time?" Adam asked, looking around.

"Well since I can't use my hands…" There was a brief silence.

"There must be so much intelligence in this place." Adam said after a moment. "Think about it. Every single person in here, someone thought they were worth torturing for it. Between them they must know enough to bring down a couple of small countries. Trouble is we can't usually get at it. We couldn't bring anyone in here in for questioning."

"What are you saying?"

"I'm not telling you to go and start questioning people, given how the nurse reacted just now I don't think that'll get you anywhere, just… see what you can pick up. I bet there are a few interesting things. And just remember, if anyone asks you any questions at all, we didn't receive any messages and we definitely did not shoot the delicious plump-breasted pigeon."

Zaf laughed.

It wasn't so much that he wanted the information, Adam mused as he left, as much as he wanted Zaf to keep thinking of himself as a spook, to have something to do that felt productive, so he wasn't just lying there, unable to stand up, remembering what they'd done to him.

* * *

 **If anybody is wondering the 'we definitely did not shoot this delicious, plump-breasted pigeon' line is a reference to the comedy series 'Blackadder'. Adam seems the type to watch it.**


	33. The Truro Centre 6:00 PM

**3/11/07  
** **6:00 PM  
** **The Truro Centre**

Adam had been gone about eight hours, by Zaf's reckoning. He couldn't see a clock from where he was, it was dark outside, but he knew he was due pain relief every four hours and antibiotics every twelve. The pain relief was a small syringe that went straight in, the antibiotics went in a drip over about an hour. He knew which was which because they timed the painful stuff so it happened shortly after the injections. Someone tapped at the door, he lifted his head. The door opened a bit. Abi's head, the nurse on duty at the moment, appeared round it.

"Someone here to see you?"

He nodded. "Let her in."

"I didn't tell you-"

"I know who she is." All that surprised Zaf was how long it had taken her. It was around a six hour drive from where she lived to here, if it had been eight hours, Zaf was willing to bet that the two hour delay hadn't been her choice. He tried to sit up, he didn't get very far, he didn't dare put weight on his hands. He couldn't get far enough to pull himself the rest of the way with his elbows. He wasn't sure if he was dreading this or not. She… she wouldn't be calm about this. And he wasn't sure how he was going to cope with that. He thought he'd hold his nerve, he wouldn't tell her anything she wasn't supposed to know. But there were other ways this could turn nasty. She'd tell him to leave his job, go corporate or freelance, but she'd been doing that for years, ever since she'd started noticing bruises on him. He'd tried to come up with plausible explanations, but black eyes were hard to explain unless someone had punched you. She'd been suspicious that what he told her about his work wasn't the whole truth for years. This was not going to help. When you went in to The Service, they told you you'd have to lie to your family. They didn't tell you about putting off arrangements because there were marks on you that were hard to conceal and looked too much like fight wounds.

There she was, hair covered, hands clasped in front of her. Even though he was worried about how this could go, he was still glad to see her. As though some childish part of him still believed that now she was here it would be okay. The door swung closed behind her. Her eyes were wet with tears. She crossed the room to him in four strides and threw her arms around him. She shook for a second, then began to weep. Not like the British professional woman she'd made herself become in order to survive here, like the Arab wife and mother she'd been brought up to be. She wasn't even trying to restrain herself. Zaf had seen parents pulling their children, alive and dead, from bombsites in Iran, Afghanistan, Syria… That was how she was crying. She pulled him forward, off his elbows, so he could support himself sitting. He put his arms around her, keeping his hands away. He could feel himself shaking. He let himself cry. For anger at what they'd done to him. For shame that he'd broken rather than making them kill him. For relief that it was over. For shame that he was putting her through this; he'd made his choice. He'd chosen to risk himself trying to protect his home, his world. She'd never been party to that. She would never have agreed.

They stayed like that for a while, both crying, her saying his name over and over again, as though she needed to keep reminding herself that he was really there.

She pulled back and put her hands on the sides of his face.

"I thought you-"

"Ow!" Pain shot through his jaw. He pulled his head up sharply, out of her hands.

"I'm sorry!" He moved his hand up towards his face, but stopped short of touching it. "I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you."

"It's alright." He'd dropped in to Urdu almost without realising. He almost always spoke Urdu to his mother.

"Where are you hurt?"

"Face, hands and feet." That was most of the truth.

She shook her head. "Why did they do it?"

"I don't know."

"They must have wanted something."

"I don't think they knew who we were."

"They said you were with a diplomatic unit."

"Who said?"

"A woman came, I don't remember her name, she said you'd been with a diplomatic unit in Syria and you'd been captured and…"

Zaf nodded. "They just assumed we were spies or something."

"So…"

Zaf nodded. Neither one of them quite had the guts to say the word. His mother sighed heavily.

"I don't - I can't - understand why anyone – anyone - would do that."

"I think they just hated the West so much that being in a car with a local driver and two white men was reason enough."

"They hate the West so they torture a Muslim to make it right."

"Do extremists ever make sense?"

There was a long silence.

"When did they bring you back?"

This was going to be fun. "Last weekend. I don't remember much of it. I wasn't in a good way."

"So why has it taken a week for them to let me see you?"

Zaf hesitated. "That was my choice."

"What?"

"You didn't see the state I came back in, Mum. I didn't want you to see that."

"Zaffar, how could you think that… Did you think I would care? I am your mother. However bad it is, I would always want to see you." She was hurt by that, but there was nothing he could do about it. He couldn't say that civilians weren't allowed near him until he was sober enough not to violate the Official Secrets Act. He looked down, away from her. "Do you understand that?"

He nodded. "All I can do is say I'm sorry. Between pain and pain meds I might not have been thinking that clearly." She made a sound as though she'd thought of saying something back, but thought better of it.

There was a tap at the door. Zaf glanced at his Mum, then told whoever they were to come in. Abi's head appeared round the door again.

"I found a chair, if you want it."

"Thank you." His Mum dropped abruptly back in to English and went to take the chair from Abi and brought it round to his bedside. Abi left again. "What's that?" She asked in Urdu, indicating the tube sticking out of his neck.

"This? Feeding tube. It has a proper name, but I have no idea how to say it in Urdu. My mouth hurt, so I couldn't eat, so they put the tube in so I didn't have to." He took a breath to say he didn't really need it anymore, but his chest wouldn't let him. He started coughing violently. Pain shot through his left shoulder with every cough. It would stop. He just had to wait.

It did stop. Of course it stopped. Zaf took a couple of steadying breaths and looked back at his Mum, who was looking worried.

"Just a chest infection. It's not TB or anything like that."

"Did you catch it in..?"

"Yeah." No need to tell her how. No need to tell her that they thought he had the cough because he'd been sick while drugged out for transport and breathed his own vomit. "They're loading me with medicine for it, I'll be fine."

There was another long silence.

"Surely, now you have to leave."

Zaf blinked slowly. This was going to be nasty, but it wasn't going to unbearable. She wasn't going to wring the broken bones in his hands or shock him until his muscles were so shot he didn't even twitch any more. Whatever happened here, he had had worse. Much worse. "This was not work's fault, Mum."

"They sent you in to the path of those men and they left you there."

"We disappeared off the road. Nobody knew where we were. They came after us and they did find us."

"You would never have been anywhere near them if you hadn't been working with the diplomats. I know you don't want to teach, but there are companies that will employ translators like the government does, but without…"

"Mum, this could have happened to anyone in the area who was seen within twenty feet of a white man. They had no idea who we were. Diplomats or businessmen, it wouldn't have mattered. If anything it would have taken longer for the soldiers to start looking for us if we'd been corporate."

"How do you know the men you were with were who they said they were? What if they were spies?"

"Mum, they needed me to say anything to anyone. They could barely manage 'hello', 'goodbye', 'please' and 'thank you'. You can't hide much from your translator."

"This does not happen to most people Zaffar. You can't come to family things because you're abroad, then you come home with bruises. Sooner or later you are going to get yourself killed. You need to get out." Zaf hesitated. The problem was that most of that was true. "When you don't call, I worry like I have a son who is a soldier. But my son is only a translator. Translators are not supposed to risk their lives."

"I didn't set out to. I don't think anyone could have predicted what happened, so I don't know how anyone could have prevented it."

"By not sending you through places where men like that might be hiding? Zaffar, do you ever think about what would happen if you died?"

"It doesn't often look likely. I spend most of my time wondering what to do with the word 'you' behind a desk in Whitehall." Being flippant didn't have any effect at all, so he changed tack. He looked down. "I did." She waited. "In the last day or two before they got us out. We didn't have the answers they wanted, they didn't believe us, they hadn't asked for ransom, I gave up. I thought I was going to die there." He could feel his throat tightening. This was almost too easy to fake. "I thought about it. I wondered how you'd find out, who'd come and tell you…" He'd half-convinced himself she'd be okay. He'd needed to. He'd needed to not feel guilty about wanting them to kill him. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his Mum dip her head and clasp her hands tightly in her lap. That was a tell with her. If he could make her uncomfortable enough, maybe he could make her drop this. It wouldn't make the problem go away, but it would let him put off dealing with it. "I thought about how I'd never get to meet Asma's kid, how we'd never swap bad translation stories again, how we'd never laugh at Rashid speaking Urdu with a Birmingham accent again…" He tailed off. Most of that was true. Your mind did strange things between bouts of torture. He waited. She didn't look up, neither did he. He might have won this. He waited longer, then "Can we talk about something else?"

"Yes, of course." She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. That might have been overkill.

"How's Asma?" Asma, Zaf's older sister, had announced a couple of months ago that she was expecting her first baby. It shouldn't be too hard to get his Mum to talk about that.

"Better. The sickness is settling down now."

"How's Rashid doing?"

"As expected, he's turned in to a mother hen."

"How's Asma taking that?"

"She either likes it or pretends she does. I think the former."

"Do they know if it's a boy or a girl yet?"

"You find that out at twenty weeks, Zaffar."

"Well how would I know that?" He'd done it. He'd got her off topic. "Are you looking forward to having children around again?"

* * *

 **Note: If anyone is interested, Zaf is coughing because he has localised aspiration pneumonia. He has aspiration pneumonia because he inhaled vomit while in the boot of the car. He was drugged with a mix of ketamine and methadone, this causes very deep sedation, under which some reflexes may be lost, so when the methadone made him vomit (which it tends to), his airway wasn't entirely successful in closing itself. His vomit was very thin because he had eaten so little in the preceding days, so he didn't choke, but what little did get in to his lungs caused an infection.**


	34. Safehouse, London 7:00 PM

**14/11/07  
** **7:00 PM  
** **Safehouse, London**

Jo shut the door behind herself and locked it. She leaned against the door, shut her eyes and took two deep breaths. She needed a drink. She'd known since it happened that it would hit her when she got home. Things like this always did.

She'd been two or three seconds from being blown up. Two or three seconds. Adam had only just got to her in time. She'd thought she was going to die. In a sense, that wasn't new, but she'd never been tied up and gagged next to a bomb before. She hung her coat up and walked in to the kitchen. She pulled a bottle of wine and a glass from the cupboard and sat down at the table.

And she'd been caught. She poured herself a glass of wine. If Adam had understood her 'Alpha three' message, he hadn't reacted fast enough to help her. And what had happened to Zaf had come up in her like bile. Adam hadn't let her see the photos of Zaf when he'd been found, but she'd heard from the doctors... Teeth and fingernails pulled out, hands and feet broken, electrical burns… She'd been scared of dying, but she'd also been scared of that. She took a long draft of wine.

If Adam had been as much as two or three seconds slower, she would have died. And he might have too.

This was when living with another spook was useful. One who'd been doing this for longer than her, had seen most of it before and survived it. She took another mouthful of wine. She wanted Zaf. She wanted him to sit with her, let her talk, tell her about the first time he'd nearly been blown up – it must have happened to him at least once – and talk about it completely calmly, to show her that in time, she would be able to look back on this and not be upset by it, to make sure she ate tonight and take the wine away and send her to bed ("because you do still have to go to work in the morning. You will thank me later.").

Actually, she didn't this time. Adam had said she could have tomorrow off. She refilled her glass.


	35. The Grid 10:00 AM

**16/11/07  
** **10:00 AM  
** **The Grid**

Two days later, Jo followed Adam out of morning briefing and caught his arm.

"Adam, is there a way I can get a note to Zaf reasonably privately?"

"Well who do you not want to see it?"

"There's no one specific, I just want to ask him something."

"His mail might get opened at Truro, but they probably wouldn't bother to decode anything. Just use a Caesar shift, that'll put off anyone who's just looking, but it won't hold a codebreaker off for five minutes, so don't put anything sensitive in there."

"Caesar shift?"

"Caesar Cipher." She looked at him blankly. "Do they not teach elementary coding any more?" She shook her head.

"They said we're better off leaving that to analysts and technicians."

"Not even the really basic stuff?" She shook her head. "It's really not hard. Google it. Or pass it to me and I'll write it in Arabic."


	36. The Truro Centre 9:20 AM

**16/11/07  
** **9:20 AM  
** **The Truro Centre**

"Zaf?"

"Come in." Zaf called, sitting up. He could put weight on his hands now. It wasn't comfortable, but he could do it. Tia came through the door.

"Good morning."

"Morning Tia."

"You look bright."

"So do you."

She smiled. "This came for you." She held a plain brown envelope out to him. He took it. "Do you know who it's from?"

"No." He replied, truthfully. He tore the top, which was harder than it should have been, his hands weren't right. Inside was another envelope, addressed to Thames House and a piece of white A4 paper, torn in half. There were letters printed on the paper, grouped like words, but not recognisable words, so code of some sort. At the bottom was an illegible squiggle, but one he recognised, Jo's initials. So Jo had sent him a coded letter. Presumably, he was supposed to break the code. It had been a long times since he'd done this.

"FJ DLFKD QL YB CIXQ ERKQFKD PLLK, F GRPQ TXKQBA QL XPH: PELRIA F YB ILLHFKD CLO LKB OLLJ LO QLT." The letter frequencies were all wrong, so it was a cipher, not a scramble code, or possibly a cipher on top of a scramble code. Jo had obviously meant him to break this, so it she probably hadn't made it too hard, she'd left the word spaces in. And it would be written in English. L was a vowel, there was no four-letter word in English that had a double consonant in the middle. F was either I or A, or standing for something. He looked up. Tia was still standing there.

"Can you not read it?"

"It's code." He showed it to her. She pulled a face.

"That's an odd way to write to someone."

"If you give me pen and paper I can probably break it." Tia pulled a notepad and pen from her pocket and handed them over. "Thanks."

"I'll be back for those. Don't steal them."

"Well I couldn't get very far, could I?"

Zaf stuck with his assumption that the single letter word, F, was I or A and that L was a vowel. If this was only a Caesar shift, F was I. If F was A, L was G, and there were too many four letter words with a double G in the middle for that to be right. So let's say F was I.

"IM GOING TO BE FLAT HUNTING SOON, I JUST WANTED TO ASK: SHOULD I BE LOOKING FOR ONE ROOM OR TWO."

That was probably right. She must still be living in a safe house. He'd given the mercs their previous address, so they couldn't go back there. She'd given him an envelope to put a reply in.

Zaf sighed heavily. Perhaps Adam had put her up to this, to try and find out if Zaf was going to come back to work. Or maybe he hadn't. Maybe this was just Jo asking if he still wanted to live with her. He liked her company. She was easy to share space with. And when it went further than company and sharing space, he liked that too. Or he had done. He was still too sore in that area to think he could enjoy that at the moment. He'd… assumed he was going back to work as soon as he was able to stand and use his hands normally. Once they'd taken his pain meds down a bit, he'd realised HR probably wouldn't let him work until Tring had put him through a lot of psych stuff. Then some of the things his mother had said had started to eat at him. He risked his life several times every year, somehow he'd always made it out so far (this time it had been blind luck), but he couldn't count on that forever. The way he was going he'd be lucky to make it to forty. And what if he did? What if he survived for long enough to retire from the field? He didn't want to settle down and marry, he didn't think he was the type anyway, but as a Spook… He'd seen what losing Fi had done to Adam, and Adam was just about the strongest person he knew. He didn't want to risk that. And he knew that the job had put Adam's kid in danger before.

If he stayed, he'd grow old alone, or die before he grew old. He would be able to make a living as a real translator, Arabic was a language in demand and he didn't see that changing. At this point, he could still get out. Just walk away. Still gagged by the Official Secrets Act, but alive.

He picked up Tia's pen again and wrote a single figure on the inside of Jo's envelope. Two. It wouldn't mean much to anyone who didn't know what she'd asked him, but she'd know what he meant.

Yes, he could live his life in relative safety, hiding in the West, sheltering behind others who were willing to risk everything to protect everyone else and never take a word of thanks, but he couldn't imagine he'd ever be content like that. He'd watch the news and imagine what sort of groups might try bombs or gas or gunmen and wait for the blows to fall, without knowing anything, just hoping Adam and Jo and Ros were on top of it. He couldn't. Not now. Even if this life destroyed him, it was his life. He'd made his choice.


	37. London 5:25 PM

**27/11/07  
** **5:25 PM  
** **London**

Jo stood with her back to a wall, outside the station, watching the taxi rank. She was a few minutes ahead of time, she'd left work forty minutes early to be sure of getting here on time in the rush hour. She was here to meet Zaf. She didn't have Harry's permission, but she had Adam's ("No, don't even ask him, just go. It's important. I'll deal with Harry if the need arises.").

It had struck Jo last night just how long it had been since she'd seen Zaf; two weeks while he was in Tehran before he'd been taken, just over a week while he'd been with the mercenaries, then four weeks in hospital. There were Christmas lights up in a few places now. When she'd last seen Zaf it had been early October. Adam had told her, several times, that he wouldn't be right, not yet. Not after something like that. She didn't know quite what to expect, she didn't know if he was scarred, if he had all of his hands and feet… She was hoping that he'd still be recognisably Zaf. He'd answered her code to say that he still wanted to live with her, she'd found a two-bed flat since then. Similar size and similar price to what they'd shared before. She'd managed the deposit on her own and the first month's rent (just about).

A cab pulled up, carrying one man. By what she could see of the shape of his face from here, it could have been Zaf. The man opened the door and got out of the cab. It was Zaf. She started towards him. He was looking around, scanning the crowds for her. God, he was thin. And pale. He just looked sick. There were marks on his face that looked like burn scars. He didn't look calm.

His eyes found hers. She walked right up to him and hugged him. He hesitated for a second, as though surprised, then hugged her back.

"Hey." She said.

"Hey."

"It's good to see you."

"You too."

She stepped back. "You okay?"

He hesitated. "Getting there."

She nodded. "Let's go."

She set off, away from the station, they had about fifteen minutes of walking to do, there was a station closer to the flat, but this had seemed like a better meeting point. She could feel Zaf half a pace behind her. He didn't seem to be limping. She didn't try to start a conversation with him, she had no idea what to say, and he seemed happy to walk in silence.

When they got to the front door of the building, Jo let them in, then turned to hand the second key to Zaf.

"That's yours."

"Thanks." He was breathing heavily. They'd only been walking.

"Are you okay?"

He nodded. "Just unfit. Three weeks bed rest."

She waited a couple of minutes, until he said he was okay, then started climbing the stairs. He kept up, he was moving fairly normally, but there was a set to his jaw. He didn't quite look normal.

"So this is it." She opened the door to the flat. "Rent's only ten pounds a month more each, if anything I think it's easier to get to work from here." He followed her in, looking around. "This is the kitchen-living… communal space, if you like. Bathroom is this one, I'm the door on the left, you're the door on the right. We boxed up most of your stuff when I moved out of the old flat and stored it. Apparently The Service will keep your stuff for six months before it presumes you dead, so it's just been sitting in storage somewhere. I had it brought up yesterday."

"Thanks." Zaf repeated. "And thanks for sorting all this, do I owe you for deposit?"

"Ideally, but…"

"I think I'm still on full pay. I'll check in the morning. And call the bank and try to convince them I'm still alive."

"It's going to be a lot to sort out, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"Oh, by the way, you're going to have to go and ask Clyde for the deposit you paid on the last place. He wouldn't give it to me."

"That was pedantic of him."

"I know. Do you want to go and start sorting your stuff out, I'll do food."

"Thanks."

"And Adam said he wanted to drop by later, just to see you."

"Okay." He disappeared towards his room. He was far too quiet tonight. He was usually talkative to the point of being irritating. It was… worrying was too strong a word. Unsettling.

She called him back for food half an hour later. He came at once and went hunting for cutlery and plates in the cupboards.

"You've tried to keep the layout the same, haven't you?" He asked.

"More or less." She said. "I got used to it that way." She handed him a bowl of pasta.

"Thanks. I'll wash up. I think I'll manage that."

"Are your hands not-"

"They're a lot better than they were. They've still got a lot of metal in them, but they more or less work now."

"When does the metal come out?"

"It doesn't. I'm just advised to stay away from strong magnets." She looked up at him. "I'm joking. It's titanium, it's not magnetic, it just stays in my hands. I can kind of feel it in a couple of places."

"That must be weird."

"It's not as weird as what _was_ in my feet. They had metal bars sticking out until five days ago."

"Sticking out?"

"Yeah, that was more or less my reaction." He took a mouthful of food. "But apparently it works and I can walk now, so…" He looked about. "What's been happening on the Grid? Adam said something about North Africa."

"Yeah, that-" Jo answered. "That happened. Algerian broke house arrest and tried to use a car bomb to blow up the Iranian Special Consul."

"The one Adam's...?"

"Yeah. Adam's sleeping with his wife."

"Is that still going on?"

"Far as I know. I was…" She didn't really want to bring up what had happened to her that day. As scared as she'd been, Zaf had had it so much worse since they'd last met. "I was kind of out of the loop that day."

"Why?"

"I was following your boy, Michael."

"Did he behave?"

Jo hesitated. She was reluctant to lie to Zaf, but part of her didn't want to talk about this right now. "It was sort of taken out of his hands." He looked questioningly at her. "He was recruited as the driver, the Algerian left the bomb and him in the car next to the target and walked away. He wasn't given a lot of information, so he misled us but I don't think he really meant to." He'd been left to die like she had. He hadn't known the bomb was there.

"Unintentional suicide bomber?" He asked. She nodded. "He's making a dangerous habit of that." He looked at her intently. She met his gaze. "You were near it, weren't you?"

"Am I still that easy to read?"

"I've had a lot of practice with you."

She shook her head. "I was okay, Adam got me out in time." He was still looking at her hard. He knew there was more.

"You say that as though you couldn't have got yourself out."

"Yeah, they… they locked me in with the bomb." She saw a look of shock pass over Zaf's face, he opened his mouth to reply, but she cut across him. "I don't really want to talk about it right now."

"Fair enough."

Jo cast about for something else to say "We've picked up a new analyst."


	38. London 8:10 PM

**27/11/07  
** **8:10 PM  
** **London**

About half an hour later, supper cleared away, Zaf heard someone come to the door. He heard Jo get up and go to look. Sense told him it was probably Adam. But something else whispered that the torturers would want him dead, that they'd found him at Truro. He could identify them, and spooks were dangerous enemies. He froze and waited.

"Zaf?" Jo called from the door. "Adam's here."

Zaf straightened up, determinedly ignoring the part of himself that wondered if Jo was under duress, and went to the door. It was Adam, of course it was Adam, hanging his coat up behind the door, a rucksack in one hand.

"Zaf." He smiled broadly and clapped Zaf on the shoulders. "You look better, much better."

"I feel better."

"Did you get anything interesting from Truro?"

"Ah… Al Khef is getting very bold in Algeria, but I think you already knew that. The Eritrean State is blaming a lot of what it does on rebel groups." Zaf started back towards the living room. Adam followed him.

"By which you mean-"

"Torture, systematic rape, summary executions…" Zaf sat down. Adam copied him. "Stuff that might attract a lot of foreign attention if they were known to be doing it widely. And the staff there are very good at telling who did the dirty work. We could probably make use of them alongside conventional forensics in some cases."

"The thing about Eritrea is news." Adam said. "How much more can you tell me about that?"

"Not a lot. As I think you saw, you have to be very careful about how you ask anything in that place."

"Who's responsible for the bulk of the patients in there?"

"Governments. Often it's mercs being paid by governments, but most of it is being run by regimes, not rebel groups."

"Do you think that's just because the rebel group ones don't get out alive?"

Zaf shrugged. "No idea. But it's alarming how young some of them are." Adam looked up at him. "Two boys. Their voices weren't even starting to break yet. You looked at them, you just knew they weren't sleeping."

Adam ran a hand through his hair. "Assad, don't tell me."

"Yeah. Suspected of spying for anti-government groups."

Adam sighed heavily. "It's bad enough when it's us; adults who've… It's much worse when it's kids." Zaf nodded once in agreement. Adam shifted his weight. "Right, I've got one thing to say to you, two things to give you." Zaf waited. Adam looked around. "Is Jo still..?" He added quietly.

"I think I heard her go to her room."

Adam nodded. "Okay, she doesn't need to hear this." Adam shifted as though steeling himself. "Right. Obviously, it'll be a while before you're back in field work. Tring will want to get hold of you soon and they'll probably tell you exactly how they want you to deal with…" Adam tailed off. "Some people take that well, some people don't. I'm just going to tell you what I was told by my handler after the first time I was caught like that." Zaf waited. After a moment, Adam looked up at him. "You know when you start working medium to long term covers, they tell you to put yourself, your real self, in a box and build the cover outside it. Don't open the box, but remember what's in it and exactly where you put it. Richard told me that the best way he'd found for dealing with this stuff was to build a cover, like you were going in to deep cover, expecting to stay there for months, years even, so flesh the cover well and keep fleshing him as you go. The purpose of the cover is to be a man who, for whatever reason, isn't bothered by what happened to him. Whether that's because he can rationalise it, he just doesn't care or he's… embraced the philosophy of Stoicism to such an extent that he can be indifferent to the pain. In every other way, the cover is like you. Same skill sets, same family, same friends, same sense of humour… Then you let yourself lose the box. You separate off the part of yourself that… feels this and hide it until you almost forget it's there." Zaf looked down. That was quite daunting, to create a false self and let that false self crush him, or parts of him, out of existence. "The professionals will probably tell you something completely different anyway." There was a long silence.

"Did you do that?" Zaf asked.

Adam hesitated. "Yeah." He said shortly, looking away. "More than once." Of course. Adam had had this twice; Syria and Serbia. Possibly other times Zaf didn't know about. And Adam was still going, losing Fi seemed to have done him much more damage than any of the other stuff he'd been through.

"Do you think it works?"

"Doesn't work perfectly. There might be something that you see or hear once in a while that threatens to break the cover, and of course you can't hold it when you're asleep. But I think it helps."

Zaf nodded. "Okay."

Adam sat up straighter. "Right, serious bit over." He reached in to his rucksack and pulled out a shoebox. "You're stuck at home for at least a couple of weeks, you'll have stuff to sort out, but how long is that going to take you?" Zaf shrugged. "You're going to be bored out of your skull in a few days, so I brought you these." Adam took the lid off the box. Inside was a series of padlocks. Zaf reached forwards and picked up one of them. Underneath was a lockpicking set. "I thought you'd be in need of something to do, picking locks is a useful skill, you can start with these, then try using pins or something."

"Thanks." Picking locks had been Fi's trick.

"I was going to try to learn when I got shot last year, but… I just never got round to it. Maybe you'll do better."

"I can try, anyway." It might make him use his hands better too. They just weren't right, still. They didn't exactly hurt any more, certain joints ached now and then, but it wasn't the same pain as it had been. But they slipped, even doing simple things. He was clumsy.

"Then these." Adam reached back in to the rucksack and pulled out two battered paperbacks, neither of them had English script on the cover. Zaf tilted his head to better read them at an angle. Arabic. "If you don't use language…"

"I know." He picked up the top book, it looked like a sort of pop-history tome, he wasn't up to reading serious academic literature in Arabic. "I've actually been using Arabic quite a bit, it's my Farsi that's in danger of slipping."

"Who've you been speaking Arabic to?"

"A few people, including an Moroccan who didn't have a word of English, or Urdu or Farsi, so that was fun."

Adam laughed and nodded. "Opposite ends of the language. I don't think I could order coffee in Morocco."

"It was hard, it was really hard. The staff can't communicate with him either, they were very glad to have someone who was willing to try. We ended up using the Quran as a sort of spelling board over games of chess."

"Who won?"

"Oh, he did, every single time. In the end he took pity on me and started trying to explain why my moves were wrong."

"But if you could barely…"

"Yeah, it didn't really work. He had to move the pieces for me as well to begin with."

"Because-"

"Yeah, hands. My chess improved a bit once I was off morphine, but only a bit."

"What did you get from that guy?"

"Absolutely nothing. I kept thinking I would, but he just refused to talk about anything useful. I thought I'd get to him in the end, but…"

"Ah well." Adam reached back in to the rucksack and pulled out a plastic case, grinning this time, and set it on the table. Zaf read the title and chuckled. Blackadder, all four series. "Have you seen all of them?" Adam asked.

"Bits over the years."

"Don't start with the first series, I don't like the last one in series two, General Hospital in series four is about spy hunting and it's the only spy hunting thing from TV I can stand." That was unlike Adam. He very publically made a point of never watching spy films or anything remotely to do with spies.

"What does it do right?"

Adam thought about it for a moment. "Everything and nothing. Just watch it."

Jo's door opened somewhere else in the flat.

"Does anyone else want tea?" She called.

"Please." Zaf called.

"No thanks Jo, I'm heading off now." Adam stood up. Zaf copied him. "You're not under any time pressure to come back." Adam said to him. "Obviously you've got a way to go physically, but… Anyway, it'll be good to have you back when you're ready, but don't hurry. Hopefully we won't get any Al Qaeda cells between then and now. I feel horribly vulnerable on those ops."

"Well if they think they're blown they usually shoot the white man first."

"Exactly. Goodnight, I'll see you when I see you." He raised his voice a bit. "Jo, I'll see you at 8:30 for briefing."

"See you." Jo called over the kettle.

 **Note: Zaf's remarks about dialects of Arabic are based in what I believe to be fact, though not being an Arabic-speaker myself I have had some trouble substantiating this. I have been told that asking a Syrian or a Pakistani and a Moroccan to speak to each other in Arabic would be less likely to work than asking a man who has never left the Scottish Highlands to speak to an African-American from rural Georgia.**

 **Note: There are fairly credible reports of boys as young as eleven being seriously abused by the Assad regime.**

 **And another note: The final episode of the second series of Blackadder features abduction and interrogation of two of the main characters. It is intended to be funny (and to my mind it is), but it's probably deeply uncomfortable viewing for anyone who has been tortured.**


	39. London 1:35 AM

**28/11/07  
** **1:35 AM  
** **London**

Jo woke with a start. Someone had screamed.

Where was she? What was going on?

She sat up.

Home. She was home. It was dark, she was in bed. Someone had screamed.

She turned on her bedside light. She heard someone moving, stumbling as though half asleep. Zaf. He'd screamed. He was heading down the hall. She got out of bed. What if he didn't know where he was? She stuck her head out of her bedroom door.

He'd gone in to the bathroom. She heard him retch, he was being sick. Oh God, poor Zaf. He'd woken up screaming and now he was being sick. Jo crept towards the bathroom door. He hadn't closed it. The light was on. She heard the toilet flush, then the tap running. She looked round the door. Zaf was standing at the sink, gripping it with both hands, his face was dripping water, his eyes were closed, his chest was heaving. He was shirtless. There were little circular burn scars all up his forearms and scattered over what she could see of his chest, and muscle had just fallen off him since she'd last seen him topless. She stood for a moment, just looking at him.

What was she supposed to do? Did she talk to him? Did she go and try to comfort him? He'd been sick. She turned and went to get him some water. She pulled a mug from the draining rack, she heard him splash his face again, and filled the mug with water. The bathroom tap stopped running. She went back towards the bathroom.

He heard her. He was still standing at the sink, gripping the edges, leaning on it, breathing hard, but he turned his head slightly to look at her as she came in.

"I'm okay." He said. "I'm okay." She didn't believe him. He'd woken up screaming and then been sick.

"Here." She held the water out to him.

"Thanks." He took it and rinsed his mouth. He looked up at her again. "Seriously Jo, I'm alright. It's not nice, but it's over quickly." He took a mouthful of water. He was still panting a bit.

"Does that happen a lot?"

He shrugged. "Sleep with earplugs in. You actually need to be up in the morning." She stood and looked at him, not knowing what to say. "Go back to bed. I'm fine."


	40. The Grid 4:50 PM

**5/12/07  
** **4:50 PM  
** **The Grid**

"Jo." Adam's voice. He appeared just behind her and sat down on the end of her desk. "You got a minute?" She was about to start closing down to go home.

"Sure."

"I… I just wanted to ask after Zaf. Is he okay?"

"He…" Jo hesitated. He was eating regularly, she came home to find him reading, starting supper, picking the locks Adam had given him to practice with and swearing at them intermittently, he was starting to work on his fitness… She looked round at Adam. "He screams in his sleep."

Adam nodded once. "He will do, for a while. How often?"

"He told me to sleep with earplugs in, before that it was… once a night that he woke me, or almost that, but I think he's waking up more often."

"Does he go back to bed?"

She nodded. "He says you die faster from not sleeping than not eating."

"He's right. It gets to you very fast. He'll be back on the grid before we know it. He'll be alright." Jo watched Adam walk away and wished she could believe him.

* * *

 **Fin**

 **This is the most chapters any fic of mine has ever had. (though it isn't the longest). Thank you for sticking with me for so long, it has now been over four months.**

 **It is possible that more may follow, but it will be a while. Various Marvel fics are obstructing.**

 **I would like to thank my Mother for proofreading this monstrosity of a fic, and God for creating the world and everything in it, then giving his life for the redemption of sinners such as I.**


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